Hope, Grudge, and Prayer

There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more,

And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want. [Proverbs 11:24 (NASB).]

1. Coming out of hopelessness.

For many years I thought that God had rejected me forever. I could not go to church. I could not read the Bible. When I tried to pray, I felt like I was trespassing.

This was the sin of hopelessness.

Things have changed. I go to church, and I read the Bible, and I pray. I do not share the modern American certainty of salvation, but I have a hope of Heaven.

The subject of this piece is prayer.

I pray several times a day. I regret the wasted years when I did not pray. But even before my years of alienation from God, I did not pray near enough.

2. Puzzling history.

When I was a young man, my mom confided in me that she had always prayed for me every day. This has been a lifelong blessing, even though she died long ago when she was about the age that I am now.

So why, when I practiced religion, didn’t I pray for my parents? That’s the merest thing that a son or daughter can do. I pray for them now, even though they are long dead. People always need prayers of the living, and, I think, always benefit from it.

3. The world’s wisdom and the foolishness of Christians.

The wisdom of the world says that prayer is an empty act. Claudius in Hamlet despaired that his prayers did not rise to Heaven, but clung flightlessly to Earth. Smart folk think that about all prayer. They think that prayers affect the world only as the flecks of spit from fervent supplicants moisten the air.

That is not the Christian concept. In The Book of Revelation, chapter 5, Jesus took a sealed scroll from the hand of God that only he could open. When he took the scroll, "the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people." (NIV.) The prayers of God’s people are incense in Heaven, saved by God for the right time.

4. Prayer evolution.

When I started to pray for people again, I prayed for my friends, for my family, for my church, and for my president. It wasn’t that long ago that I started to do that.

But now I pray for more people.

Here’s a secret about me. I hold grudges. Just yesterday, I was driving home from work and I remembered a judge who pounded me long ago. A prosecutor had subpoenaed my client’s medical records for a manslaughter/drunk driving case I was defending. She wanted me to agree that the jury could see those records, and she wanted me to agree to that before she unsealed the records.

I’m many things, but I don’t think that I’m stupid. I won’t agree to let records go to the jury before I actually look at those records and know what’s in them. There might be something in those records that hurts my client, and I might be able to keep that harmful stuff from the jury with a timely objection. But I won’t know that until I see what’s in the records. What the prosecutor wanted was ridiculous.

But when I refused, the prosecutor complained to the judge. And the judge was so angry at me that I thought that steam was going to geyser out of his ears. And in his anger he ruled against me on a pending motion on a silly technicality. He made it clear that he did this because of my lack of ethics in refusing to agree to let the jury see these records that I had in fact not looked at. He made it clear that he was teaching me a lesson.

As I remembered this incident, I invented a speech that I would have liked to have made to that judge. It would have lasted several minutes, and it would lacerated him with sarcasm. But slowly I realized that I was wrong to relish this speech that fortunately I had never made.

So instead I prayed for him. I prayed that he would have real wisdom as he performed his office. I hope that God answers that prayer, and I think that he will.

I hold a lot of grudges. That’s how I am. But now, as often as a grudge comes to mind, I use it as prompt to pray for God to bless the object of my grudge. Sometimes there’s a tug-of-war in my mind between fanning my grudge and praying it away.

And it’s not only these people that I pray for. As I said, I was blessed with a mom that prayed for me every day. But I know that some people have never been prayed for. So I’ve started to try to think of people who might never have had someone to pray for them, and I step up.

5. Scattering and increase.

Make no mistake. I pray more than I did, but I am far far away from praying without ceasing. (1 Thessalonians 5.)

But I’m grateful for the time I spend in prayer. That brings me back to the quotation at the start of this piece, Proverbs 11:24:

There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more,

And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want.

I scatter my prayers; I hope that these scattered prayers will increase the spirit of God in me.