Thoughts in Prayer
Tonight a group of us from the congregation spent some time together in prayer to our Father. The focus of our prayer was the plight of the people in Zimbabwe.
I was once again humbled by power of this simple act. We sat holding hands; black and white, men and women and children, just praying….and yet, is there anything more that we could do!? Not to say that we shouldn’t do other things, but the greatest thing we have to offer in aid is our prayers.
I sat and listened to Takesure, one of my brothers, praying for his family back home in Zim, and as I prayed with him I looked at my daughter…I imagined what it would be like to hold her as she cried until she was too weak to cry. To hold her and know that I had no food for her or her mother. It is nearly beyond my ability to comprehend, and yet I’m thankful for this time to dwell on such thoughts.
These thoughts put many things in my frivolous life into perspective. Me….a person who considers driving a car without air conditioning as ‘hardship’….a person who has the audacity to stand in line at a restaurant and complain about ’starving’ bc I’ve gone a whole 3-4hours without eating….a person who complains about the taste of the perfectly clean and abundant tapwater in my house.
Why do I have so much, while others have so little? It is undeniable that our global system of economics has a part to play in this. It is equally undeniable that I have played my part.
I pray to God that I will have the will to live more simply in a society obsessed with material things so that I may have more to share with those who have nothing.
I pray that I will be able to teach my daughter about gratitude and the sacrificial love that Christ has taught me.
I pray that we all will meditate on the depths and implications of Christ’s call to ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Love to you all!
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This is especially humbling at this time of the year when we become obsessed with buying more, more, more…
Thank you for sharing.
Amen to that. I used to hate prayer nights because they bored me or something equally inane, I suppose. But lately I’ve come to respect the power of prayer. I still am not too big on praying in public though, its too easy to make a mistake which changes everything. But I’ll become comfortable with it eventually :p
Good job!
~John
Great point.
Though your post is not really about prayer itself, one thought I share in my series on prayer.
There is no power in prayer. The power is in the God to whom we pray. (The ESV translation notwithstanding)
When we grasp that, I think many of our problems with prayer vanish.
Just a thought.