Now what? Well, the first step is to recognize the problem. The next step is to pray about it.

On the one hand, it's sort of almost a cheesy Christian line, "Pray about the situation." But if we all did, the world would be a better place. Give me any situation, and at least half of the correct course of action will almost always be "Pray!" Have you been a Christian all this time and not learned that prayer is everything? If you are interested in learning anything from the Snipe site, forget about Calvinism and the Friday Symposium. If you haven't learned to pray (I mean, if you aren't learning. Has anyone ever actually learned?), don't think too hard about Calvinism until you're further on your way to developing habits of prayer.

On the other hand, it could be more than that. The Old Testament prophets knew something of rage. Injustice, hypocrisy, murder. They make us angry, or they should. Problems at DBU, problems with professors, problems with chapel, problems with the direction the school is going...whatever. Do they make you angry? Good, now you have to make the ultimate choice, the most difficult choice you may ever make in your life: Will you pray for that? Does DBU bother you, or anything about it? To whatever extent anything here angers you or is clearly recognizable to you as a problem, to that extent the decision is vital:

Will you pray for DBU? Will you pray not because you loved it first? Will you pray not because it's good (it might be), but because it's bad, or--for the sake of the badness?

The only way to love someone unlovable or something otherwise difficult to love, is to pray for that someone or something. Some of you are praying for DBU because you love it. Some of us have to make the choice: will we now love DBU because we pray for it? Or will we not pray? The alternative is madness for those of us with more intense levels of passion. For all of us, the alternative is sin. To know of sin and not to pray for it is sin.

What is the doctrine of intercession? Beleive me, please, dear friends, when I say, if I know what it is, I never knew that I know. But I do know this: intercession is everything. Has anyone agreed with any criticisms offered on the Snipe site? Have you prayed for those persons involved? Then you have failed to properly respond to that knowledge, and the Snipe site has served no purpose.

We've already gone over how truth without love isn't much good. Well, truth without prayer isn't much good either. First there is the decision you don't always realize that you're making befor you pray for God to help and bless someone, the decision to care enough about their welfare to pray for them. Then comes the sublime mystery of prayer. No one knows how God changes the human heart. But it's been tested and confirmed: keep praying for someone, and you will love them.

So prayer changes the hearts of the pray-er. Will it do anything else? Yeah, probably. I don't know how prayer works when God already knew the future, but it does work.

We know this: there are problems. I am now telling you this: pray for them. This is the necessity that separates the sheep from the goats among the denizens of the Snipe site. Those who are not interested in prayer will always be welcome as free citizens (the DBU Snipe loves free speech), and they can express their opinions, too (insofar as we have time and the opinions are reasonable). But those of you who are interested in various things (obedience to God; changing things, getting something done; love and truth) should pray for any and every problem mentioned here at the Snipe site.

There's my most important essay. Sorry it wasn't very well-written. Maybe sometime I'll be inspired like I was for the last three essays With that call to prayer, the Snipe site is now basically complete.