The Bungee Cord 2-5-24

Hello,

“I’ll keep you in my thoughts and prayers.”

This is a regularly said response to tragedies and suffering. Lately, I have heard people say that this response is trivial and insufficient. “It’s time for more than just thoughts and prayers.” And maybe it is. Maybe it is time to take a hard look and make difficult decisions about the way we live, about the way we treat each other, and the sinfulness in all of our hearts. The trouble is, of course, that the struggles of the world are so complex and intertwined. Good hearted people who want to do something, often want to do opposite things to deal with turmoil and strife. Doing something, although worthy of the effort, rarely solves the problem. Doing nothing, likewise, tends to just make things worse.

“I’ll keep you in my thoughts and prayers,” I believe, is doing something, and that something although it may not be sufficient, it certainly is not trivial, because prayer does something.

When a person prays for another, it does something to the one who prays. It places the one prayed for the pray-er’s heart and mind. The one who prays is drawn to the one for whom the prayer is raised. When this happens, the one who prays starts to feel the anguish in the other’s life and it becomes part of the pray-er’s. The one who prays finds their eyes open to the fears and worries of the other’s life. The one who prays has their eyes opened to the conditions of the prayed for’s life. When people pray for one another, people are no longer just statistics, or a racial group, or an economic class, or citizens of a country. Prayer turns people into people.

That is why Jesus prayed for his disciples and told them to pray for their enemies. Imagine what would happen if members of the NRA and advocates for stronger gun laws prayed for each other. Imagine what would happen if suburbanites and inner-city folk prayed for each other. Imagine if Democrats and Republicans prayed for each other. Imagine if leaders of nations prayed for each other. Imagine.

And prayer also does something to the one who is prayed for. I know that every prayer that is prayed for me is part of a quilt of grace and love that wraps me in the bitter cold of the world. Every prayer adds layers and warmth to that quilt. When things are going wrong for me, I often feel alone, facing the chilling winds of pain, fear, and confusion alone. Sometimes things are so overwhelming that I feel the wind attacking my bare skin. But when someone says to me, “I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers,” I know that I am not alone, and the bite of the chilling wind is diminished, and when I hear that many people are praying for me, I even begin to warm up.

In our church, we pray in our worship service for people who are undergoing turmoil in their lives. We also have a “prayer chain” that holds people in prayer outside of worship. Contrary to what many say, we don’t do these things because we believe that the more people that we get to pray, the more “effective” our prayer will be. That reasoning seems so un-faithful because, Jesus tells us that God listens with equal attentiveness to the prayer of one child or a prayer of a thousand people. The reason that we bring many people into prayer for another is that each of the prayers of the many is a piece of that quilt of grace and love that the prayed for one becomes enveloped in. Having lived in South Dakota and Minnesota, I know, that when you are shoveling yourself out of a major sub-zero blizzard, you don’t do that wearing a spring jacket. You put on a thick down coat! That is what prayer does for the one for whom the prayer is being raised.

“I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers,” is so vitally important, because it sets a foundation of hope in the life of the one prayed for, and it helps guide the one who wants to do something for the other. Although I don’t regularly name each of you in my prayers, I hope that this Bungee Cord comes to you as a prayer….placing you in my heart and placing a patch of a quilt of grace and love around you.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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