A very helpful tool for prayer: the Facebook Friend Wheel

Through my friend Yann, I recently discovered the Facebook Friend Wheel. All it does is connect--with coloured lines, and in the most efficient way--all of your friends who know each other.

The Friend Wheel is an amazing visualization of your life as represented by who you are connected to on Facebook. Depending on how zealous you have been in finding your friends from years gone by, it will map the stages of your life (e.g., elementary, high school, post-secondary) and your social circles.

Amazing discoveries can be made: "Wow, I didn't know Sonja knew Tim!"

While the Friend Wheel can be a lot of fun, I think the main value of it to the majority of the people who read this blog--and me!--is that it is an amazing tool for prayer. It:

-is exceedingly better than a simple list
-is easy to generate
-sparks ideas for prayer
-puts people in context
-gives you ideas to connect people
-shows you who God has put in your life
-shows you people that you may be the only link to
-helps make prayer exciting (as it should be!)

If you click the friend wheel image above, you can see my full-sized prayer/friend wheel (3 MB) - to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. (I will probably remove it in a couple weeks.)

Because I found it so helpful for prayer, I printed it out (the "super-huge" version that you can also get: 4-by-4 feet! - about 12 sheets folded and stuck together) and put it on my bedroom wall.

Prayer wheel it up!