Just Like This

I was baking with one of our grandsons a couple of weeks ago.  We worked step by step through the process. As he dipped out the flour from the big plastic tub, the measuring cup was overflowing.  "Take a knife and smooth over the top, to make it even," I said.  I showed him, and then let him do it.

A few days later, he was baking something at his house.  It is my daughter's home school way of tactically teaching measurements and fractions.  When he saw me walking into the kitchen, he announced "I used your little trick with the measuring cup."

He watched, he listened, he copied my actions.  You never know what a child will observe.  You never know what sticks.  No doubt he will remember this trick the rest of his life.

Along that same line of watching, listening and practicing, I have learned a lot about prayer by observing those who pray.  I have been impacted not by eloquent words, but in their daily continually conversing with God.  

One of my most memorable observations about prayer was not just because of an answer.

It happened in the foyer of our church, back in the olden days when churches had both Sunday morning and evening services.  I have no idea what the sermon was about.  I have no idea who preached.  But after that evening service, as the pews emptied, people lingered in casual fellowship as was their custom.  The rhythm of conversations, the tenor of the voices, almost sounded like a choir practicing their parts.

I was about 11 or 12 at the time.  In the lingering, my dad was talking with one of the ancient women of the church whose faith was as visible as her deeply engraved wrinkles.  As their conversation was coming to an end, she concluded by asking my dad, "Bob, what can I be praying for you this week?"

"Oh, there is nothing to pray about," he replied.

"There is always something to pray about," she said.  "What has been on your mind?"

"Well, our house in New Jersey still has not sold after almost a year," he confessed.  "But God is not interested in stuff like that."

I had been following their conversation like a ping pong match, looking from one face to another.

At that moment, after my dad's remark, I looked at this old woman's face.  She had a twinkle in her eyes.

I can remember even now her facial expression.  She knew something we didn't.

Two days later, the house was under contract.

But the "answer" to prayer was not what wowed me.  It was that twinkle in her eyes.  She absolutely knew something we didn't.  She jumped at the opportunity to pray as a first response, not last resort.  And that pattern over the many decades of her life drew her in closer communion with God and subsequently pointed us to Him.  I watched and listened, and I saw what she did.

Praying was her passion, not just because as a woman in her 80s, she did not have anything else to do with her time.  But there was nothing better.  Praying had been woven into her heart as a thread that held everything else together.  She was not compelled by the answers, but to know Christ more.  She knew that prayer went far beyond the issue at hand.  She knew prayer is not telling God what to do, but realizing who He is.

I have often thought about those few minutes in the foyer.  She did not know that incident would stick in the heart of that little girl standing next to her, who was not even involved in the conversation.

Or maybe she did. 

As far as I can tell, she was not consciously thinking, "I am going to teach that young girl about prayer that she will never forget."  But she just continued to live faithfully, pray continually, love others well, and leave a trail of crumbs behind her. 

Oswald Chambers once said, "Which are the people who have influenced us most?  Not the ones who thought they did, but those who had not the remotest notion that they were influencing us."

 

The prayer of a righteous person

has great power as it is working. 

                       James 5. 16

When we seek God,

when we pray,

something always happens,

a shift in the tectonic plates

    of the world,

    and in our hearts,

even in something we may not realize.

Something happens,

     and something else does not. 

Have I even considered praying

                         about this?