Monday, as the winds of Sandy were rattling our windows, the trees tossing and turning, the waves on the river rising, the rain pelting the ground, I was feeling mighty uneasy. What would happen? Where would this end?
By now we know. I’m writing from a city where too many people are without electricity and the other half are offering up electrical outlets for phones and laptops to be recharged, not to mention showers, meals, beds, washing machines, dryers. You would think my spirits would be as unsettled now as they were then.
But I’m trying to hold on to what I learned on Monday and putting it into practice.
As the storm approached, I turned from the window, the view fading fast under the onslaught of wind and rain, I remembered that on Monday, if I were at the office, I would be with my colleagues reading prayer requests that come to us from all over the world.
Log on now, I told myself. Find someone else you can pray for. Quite frankly I was getting tired of my own anxiety and worries.
I went to the Pray for Others page and started to scroll down. Wow, there were so many heartbreaking requests. People losing their homes, people desperately looking for jobs, families struggling to put food on the table, people buried under debt, people suffering from disease, couples having problems in their marriages, even people worried about Sandy. And also those seemingly smaller requests that deserve just as much attention because they come from the heart: a student worried about a test, a mom teaching her son to read, a girl trying out for cheerleading.
I prayed for all of them. What balm for my soul. The apostle Paul faced one hardship after another, but in the midst of them he was always praying for others. No wonder. Or think of how Jesus asks us to pray in every line of the Lord’s Prayer: Give us our daily bread, forgive us our sins, lead us not in temptation. Why? Pray for others and your own problems shrink in comparison. Even in the midst of a terrible storm. Perhaps especially in the midst of a storm.
Let me know how I can pray for you. I need to do it for me as much as for you. I’m still unnerved by Sandy and its consequences. It’s tragic to see so much devastation. Little by little people will remake their lives. Let me pray for them as I pray for my needs.
