Let us pray.
I know, those few words are enough to send some readers scattering. Please, give me an opportunity to explain this today, the National Day of Prayer.
Recently I found myself in the friendly crossfire between two colleagues. Robert struggled with a solution to a problem, while Lee smiled faintly and went about his own business. When I asked Lee if he had any ideas that might help Robert, he replied, “Sure. I know exactly what to do.”
“Then why aren’t you helping him?” I asked.
“He didn’t ask,” Lee said.
Lee wasn’t being unkind. He just acknowledged that our colleague’s foolish pride prevented him from asking for help. Left to his own devices, Robert might never find an answer to his problem.
This is how I sometimes think about prayer. Of course, many scoff at the very suggestion of prayer. Not long ago, I was talking with an acquaintance about a mutual friend undergoing chemotherapy. I mentioned our friend would be in my prayers. In front of his children, my acquaintance scoffed and rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, prayers. Like that’s going to help.”
Did he think praying is something that only grandmothers do? That prayers have no effect on our “modern” world? Among everything God gives us, the foremost is free will. Prayers, for the sake of any argument, are not something I would challenge or mock.
San Antonio writer Max Lucado notes in his book, “In the Eye of the Storm” (Thomas Nelson, January 2002), “My prayer is that you will find some word . . . some thought that will convince you that He is very near.”
Newspapers are filled with loathing, suspicion and criticism of political parties and our government leaders. Most express complaints and forecasts of gloom.
Bob Dole described it this way in his book “Great Presidential Wit,” (Scribner, May 2002):
Few presidents have been so beset by problems as Abraham Lincoln. When, in the darkest days of the Civil War, a delegation of prominent Bostonians came to the White House to voice their complaints, the president listened patiently before asking, “Do you remember that a few years ago [Charles] Blondin walked across a tightrope stretched over the falls of Niagara?”
The men before him nodded their heads. Lincoln continued:
“Suppose that all the material values in this great country of ours, from the Atlantic to the Pacific — its wealth, its prosperity, its achievements in the present and its hopes for the future — could all have been concentrated and given to Blondin to carry over that awful crossing and that their preservation should have depended upon his ability to somehow get them across to the other side. And suppose that everything you yourself held dearest in the world, the safety of your family, and the security of your home, also depended on his crossing.
“And suppose you had been on the shore when he was going over, as he was carefully feeling his way along and balancing his pole with all his most delicate skill over the thundering cataract. Would you have shouted to him, ‘Blondin, a step to the right! Blondin, a step to the left!’ Or would you have stood there speechless and held your breath and prayed to the Almighty to guide and help him safely through the trial?”
The visiting delegation got the point.
Today, in the midst of a constant barrage of domestic issues, we’re also in the shadow of evil that looks for any opportunity to impale the free world. Today there’s a new face in the White House, also an attorney from Illinois, also called “inexperienced,” who is facing an even greater barrage of complaints and scrutiny.
Whether you agree or disagree with his actions, it’s probably best to remember that he is just one person who can only do so much. Maybe a prayer is not only in order, but exactly what we need.
One never knows. It could be that God is just waiting for us to ask.
Armand Lobato (armandlobato@comcast.net) of Broomfield was on the 2008 Colorado Voices panel.
