During the years of World War 2, Corrie ten Boom and her family hid about 800 Jewish people in their home. They were imprisoned for their resistance activities. Only Corrie survived. After the war, this elderly Dutch watchmaker faithfully testified about God and her experience as a concentration camp survivor.
In an old wobbly broadcast I found on YouTube, Corrie then in her 80s spoke about meeting an older gentleman who came to one of her talks, three decades after the war, having recognized the name ten Boom.
“I had a teacher named ten Boom when I was seven. Was that you?” he asked her.
“No,” she replied. “That was my older sister.”
“Well, I was in her class,” the white-haired man said.
And suddenly Corrie remembered when she was about twelve or thirteen, her older sister Betsie taught school in their hometown of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Betsie came home at night,
and asked her family to pray for her class of seven and eight year old boys
and girls, not for better behavior or doing their schoolwork, but for their spiritual well-being. And now, seventy years later, here was
one of those little boys with all those prayers from so long ago still sticking
to him. God was still drawing that seven-year-old boy to Himself.
We all-too-often shortchange the act of praying. Prayer is not limited to immediate requests nor to what we consider timely answers. Once committed to prayer, God’s responses continue to pour in.
Praying creates a space, not just for God to work, but for us to understand that He is unfolding His purposes. And when we come before Him to pray, we cannot even number His wonders in unlikely places and unexpected ways, even in matters we cannot yet see -- maybe especially in what we cannot yet see. We have no idea what sticks – or to whom.
My husband often uses a product called tenacious tape to repair damaged outdoor gear. That strong adhesive sticks and adheres to basically about anything, grasping tightly, holding the rips and wounds together, avoiding further damage, and not readily relinquishing its grip. What if we prayed like that?
Tenacious prayer does not stubbornly insist on its own way -- telling God how and when to answer -- adhering not to circumstances but aligning our hearts to His. Sticky prayers change us in the very process of praying. Our hearts are not stuck on a certain outcome or answer. But realizing the Almighty has a firm hold on us, far beyond our lifetimes, impacting even those yet unborn who come after us. God is not about to let go. Our prayers are not tenacious. But God is.
Tenacity is an outward form of God's faithfulness.
Seventy years had passed, prayers long forgotten, but in that very moment, Corrie remembered holding hands with her family, praying nightly for children they mostly didn't know. And now, an answer to her family's prayers was standing in front of her, in flesh and blood. On the surface, it appeared that it took a long time for him to get there. But not really. Prayer comes with no restrictions and no expiration date. God is right on time. He always is, even when we don't realize it. He is not the one who forgets.
Would we pray differently if we knew our prayers would be yet reverberating seventy years from now, or even lingering long after we have forgotten what we prayed about? It is not that those prayers have gone unanswered, but are not yet completed.
The other day while running in the woods, I was visually captured by the fresh green of spring all around me. Many bushes along the path were covered in tightly-wrapped buds, standing straight and upright at attention, as if waiting for a signal to bloom. It was not time yet. Like so many prayers, their beauty and fragrance were ready and waiting to burst forth. But not just yet.
The Almighty unfolds His wonders, unrestricted by our meager vocabulary, not limited by time, but set into motion for all eternity, backwards and forwards, upside down and right-side up, immensely beyond our understanding, vision, or lifetimes.
In prayer, God invites us into His marvelous, creative and sovereign work. We adhere our prayers to His will --that which we comprehend and that which we cannot. He does the heavy-lifting. God completes our prayers in unexpected ways. God glues together the prayers of the saints – even yours and mine—over the scope of all eternity.
With what are we coming before Him today-- seventy years in the making?
But for You, O LORD, do I wait;
it is You, O Lord my God, who will answer.
Psalm 38. 15
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