Have you noticed lately the size of the world?
A couple of weeks ago, I told you prayer is a conversation and relationship with God. Listen, talk. Talk, Listen. Last week, I told you prayer begins in your home. Prayer for family members changes your relationship with them.
Now, widen your perspective beyond your own relationship with God, beyond your relationships with family members, and take in a view of the wider world. Could your meager prayer really do something in the great big world and universe in which we live?
Madeleine L’Engle write a book called “A Stone For a Pillow”, part of a trilogy commentary on Genesis. In it, she tells the story of a time her friend confided in her, telling Madeleine a secret. Soon after, that friend wrongly and angrily blamed Madeleine for leaking the secret. Madeleine was ticked. She earnestly prayed to process her sense of hurt and betrayal. Who had actually betrayed the secret? She would never know. And would her friend ever confide in her again?
In one of her prayers, she heard herself say and mean, “Oh God, bless the bastard.”
Lisa Lewtonlisalewton.com
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Blessings are sticky business in which human beings are entrusted to one another. If it is the people whom we love and who love us back that receive our blessing, our wide world shrinks. It is easy to bless people who like us, but something else to bless the one who betrays us.
In a time of deep divide and animosity in the world, what might happen if we pray for the ones who think and live differently? Could the world take a deep breath if we replace angry rhetoric with curiosity and humility? If our response to the news is a prayerful question instead of condemnation, you know what changes?
You.
And if you change, and then a few other you’s change, and a few thousand you’s change…you get the idea.
Your prayer means something for you, for your family, and for the world. Your prayer might be no more than, “Bless the bastard.” If you don’t believe your prayer means something, try for a week to pray for people you do not like and if it doesn’t do anything to you, you’ve lost nothing. If it does work…Look. Out. World.
Lisa Lewton 