Diagnosis Prayer

I love the Chichester prayer.  It has really helped keep me on track for these last few weeks.  I have been looking for and seeing God at work in my life, I have embraced and tried to honor and love the God behind those moments, and as a result I think I am following Christ more closely. 

Here’s an added dimension I hadn’t really thought about before.  Because I am on the lookout for God every day, I also notice situations where God isn’t—or at least where God’s presence is not obvious.  And I’ve started to try and fill that hole, either with my own response, or by praying that God make himself known and intervene in more obvious ways.

         Let me give you a couple of examples. 

I am a pretty insulated, pay-attention-to-my-own-backyard kind of guy.  But you cannot help but notice the riotous ups and downs going on in the Ukraine over the last several weeks.  And now things are even more grim with the expected intervention of Russian troops any time now.  If you love democracy, and if you believe political freedom is always a good and even godly thing, then it’s easy to see that God has been moving among the people of Ukraine to stand up to and overcome a corrupt and unpopular leader.  But I fear a repeat of what happened to Russia’s other neighbor, Georgia, some six years ago.  There was bloodshed and military intervention and the best that the rest of the world could do was stand by and witness tragics repression.

         So what’s a Hoosier Christian to do?  Pray of course.  I’ve started praying for the people of Ukraine: that they might act wisely and not needlessly provoke the Russians.  I am praying for the European Union that they might find a way—short of military intervention of their own—to make it very clear that invading Ukrainian sovereignty is unacceptable.  And it would be silly to do all this praying and not pray for Vladimir Putin: that he sees the advantage of a peaceful compromise in this matter.  Normally, I don’t pray foreign policy.  Normally, I just sigh and prepare myself for what feels like the inevitable worst-case-scenerio.          

         On a personal level there is a colleague of mine, a Methodist Pastor, who was recently diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.  I was at his church for a meeting recently and saw him interacting with other pastors.  I thought that if I were him, I would get tired of offers of sympathy and requests for information.  My first instinct was to say ‘hello’ but otherwise let him be. 

But I had been praying the Chichester Prayer.  And it didn’t seem right that such a gifted pastor should be facing such a grim diagnosis.  I had a hard time seeing God anywhere in this man’s situation.  So I went up and talked with him.  We talked about events of the day, but I left openings for him to share whatever he wanted to share.  And he did.  He told me about an experience he had as a young man when he faced the real possibility of falling off a cliff.  He related that rather than being overcome with fear, he felt a deep peace, knowing that he is was in God’s hands whatever happened.  We talked for 15 minutes or so and then got interrupted.  Yet as I walked away, I felt as if he had ministered to me.  His courage and confidence in God was clearly a big flashing sign that God was most certainly at work in his life and ministry.

         Oswald Chambers once said, “Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”  And even though it defies logic and our “what have you done for me lately” world, I think it is true.  Prayer has the power to keep us plugged into God’s Spirit so that we have the kind of perspective that allows us to live more compassionately and faithfully.