Change Me, God, and Then the World

A slender, bold, black-on-white sign is attached to the outside wall approaching the Prayer Room in our church. Though there over time and a bit bedraggled, I had not really noticed it-- much less paid attention to what it said--until yesterday, in a solitary moment, passing by on my way to greet the preschoolers on the other end of the building.

"Bold persistent prayer works," it proclaimed. "First it changes us. Then it changes the world." I stopped momentarily in a room further down the hall to write it down in my datebook and discovered that fleeting as my memory is I needed to go back to get it right. The rest of the day and through last night it has haunted me--almost like a word from God, hanging in the air all around until it accomplishes what he sent it out to do in me.

Have you noticed how easy it is to be defensive spiritually, hunkered down in your little self, wanting somehow to avoid life's threats and challenges, either by pretending they are not real or by shoving them off as someone else's responsibility? In your own impatience and sometimes even disgust over the opinionations of others, have you faced recently your own facile opinionations concerning them and the world at large?

Thoughtless prayer, aimed as much at others as to God, is hardly useful. It might actually be more hurtful than helpful, no matter how many hours one might spend exercising it. But "bold persistent prayer works," because it changes us first into vessels of the caring grace God is out dispensing in his passion to change the world.

Change me, God, praying as I write. Break down every middle wall of partition that separates me from you and every other human being and circumstance. "Purge me with hyssop and I will be clean.... Fill me with joy and gladness.... Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.... Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you" (Psalm 51:7,8,10,13).