Day 66: "Nothing Fails Like Prayer"

DAY 66

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

WEEK TEN: TUESDAY 19 MAY 2020

“Nothing Fails Like Prayer”

“Wishful thinking cannot suspend the natural laws of the universe. Prayer cannot stop a virus. Pius politicians should get off their knees and get to work. House Resolution 947 is wisely calling for a National Day of Reason, because irrationality, magical thinking, and superstition have undermined the national effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.” - From a full page newspaper ad placed by Freedom From Religion Foundation 7 April 2020.

Christianity is not the only game in town, to employ an idiom implying there are no competitors. As we place a greater emphasis on prayer during these unprecedented times, others are equally committed to publicizing their deeply held worldviews in which there is no room for deity and hence no need for prayer. After all, if God doesn’t exist then prayer is an unproductive exercise in futility and a waste of time. 

Her name was Jewell, a diminutive lady in her ‘60’s in plain dresses with her hair in a bun, no makeup and no jewelry. Hailing from Arkansas, she had transported, intact, her rural Pentecostal culture to the urban sprawl of southern California, and it was there that I met her while a student in a nearby Christian college. A handful of us got to know her fairly well, and were drawn to her at times when we needed someone who knew how to pray. “She could get ahold of heaven,” as the saying goes, and when she prayed you knew Jesus was listening. To this day I have never met anyone like her. She was a classic ‘prayer warrior’ exemplified by the lady in the 2015 theater movie “War Room,” exhibiting a Holy Spirit power that guts the Freedom From Religion ad.

A visualizing of the armament needed to engage in spiritual warfare, laid out in Ephesians 6, includes: a belt (of truth), a breastplate (of righteousness), a shield (of faith), a helmet (of salvation) and a sword (of the Spirit.) But the last listed cannot be visualized, only engaged in: “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests … be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.” “Nothing fails like prayer?” No, nothing works like prayer.

Reflective question: Are you up to meeting a prayer warrior? Watch the movie “War Room.”

Reflective Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:16 - “… pray without ceasing …”

Reflective hymn: “Sweet Hour of Prayer” – William Walford (1772-1850)

Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, that calls me from a world of care,

And bids me at my Father’s throne make all my wants and wishes known.

In seasons of distress and grief my soul has often found relief,

And oft escaped the tempter’s snare, by thy return sweet hour of prayer.