Practice in Persistence
As I have been spending my days isolated in a pandemic, prayer has been on my mind a lot lately. TV preachers are peddling faith healing quick-fixes, and still, others brush off social distancing protocols because they believe God will heal them.
Yet even as I sit down to type this devotional, a CNN update pings to my phone: "Projection shows jump in deaths: A Trump administration model projects US coronavirus deaths will hit 3,000 a day by June, the NY Times reports, up from about 2,000 a day right now."
As a person of faith who also believes in the Scientific Method, I often struggle to understand the power of prayer, where and how God heals and moves in the world in response to our prayers.
Two examples of Jesus' perspective on prayer come to mind, both parables and they continue to surprise me and make the think.
The first is the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18, who continues to approach her local judge, and by "approach" I mean nag. She literally nags him until he gives her the justice she desires. If this unjust judge grants this lady justice just to get her off his back, Jesus says, imagine how much more our loving, just God will hear our cries for justice.
The other story is what scripture calls "The Parable of the Friend At Midnight" (Luke 11). In this parable, a guy goes to his friend at midnight, knocks on his door, and says "Give me some bread. A house guest just showed up and I've got nothing to give him." While the friend might say, "DUDE, it's midnight and my kids are asleep. Go away," He will surely give you the food to get you to leave and stop bothering him." (I might call this "The Parable of the Dysfunctional Friendship" but that's another matter.)
The point of both of these parables seems to be not about the virtue of the request--though both justice and hospitality are worthy requests. Instead, the point about prayer here that Jesus is making is that the key is persistence: to just keep knocking and just keep pressing, and just keep whispering into the night, even when it feels like you've been doing it forever to no avail.
To Jesus, prayer was a practice and a habit more than a transaction. And his bottom line was this: God is definitely not an unjust judge or a lazy friend, who gives you what you want just to get you to leave them alone.
"Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?" Jesus asks.
I don't know what this means about faith healing or the coronavirus. But I do know that God is loving and just. So whatever answer we receive, even if it is not what we had hoped for, it is from a God who cares and wants the best for us, whether or not we agree what that might look like.
So even if you feel silly whispering your prayers into the night, keep doing it. When it feels like all you can do is stay home and watch a death toll rise on the news, there is power in persistently giving your powerlessness to a God who sees and cares.
Kelsey Lewis Vincent, Pastor for Youth and Families, First Baptist Decatur