a prayer for strength

A Prayer for Strength

by Richard Langford

                Help us to know Your love and the love of each other. Set us free to become our true selves because we are loved, and to free others because we love.

                Give us enough tests to make us strong,

enough vision and endurance to follow Your way,

enough patience to persist when the going is difficult,

enough of reality to know our weaknesses,

and enough humility to know these gifts come from You.

Go before us to prepare the way;

walk behind us to be our protection;

and walk beside us to be our companion,

                                                through Christ our Lord, Amen.

From Hymns for the Family of God. Published by Paragon Associates, Inc. (Nashville, 1976)

it takes time

In the story, the people of Israel are taken from Jerusalem to Babylon. As they leave the city, they look back and see the smoke rising. The soldiers marched the people of God a long, long way from their home to the place of exile. The journey took a very long time and some of the people died on the way. The exile lasted 70 years, the passing of a full generation.

In the children’s ministry curriculum Godly Play, the telling of the story involves moving the people from "Jerusalem" to "Babylon.” There is a river in the way and the people are led around it. Of course, this adds some extra seconds to the telling of the story.

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of telling this story to a group of children in upper elementary school. As the people moved, we tried to practice silence. But, this was hard. A bit of dialogue:

The children: "Can't we just put the people over there?"

Me: "No, we can't."

"But, why?"

"Because they couldn't just go over there like that and their story is our story."

"But, we know that. Let's just put them over there so we can keep telling the story."

"Well, I would like to do that--and that would be nice--but that's not how the story goes. They had to go this way. They couldn't just hop over there in a second. Think about this for a second. Let's wonder a bit."

I gestured to one of the children and asked: "How old are you now?"

"Nine."

"Let's say you were one of the children taken into captivity. How old would you be when you returned to Jerusalem?"

We discussed that for a bit and then noted: "You would have spent your whole life away from home."

After we finished wondering about the story, a couple of the children wanted to work with the story more during a free response time we host every week. When it came to moving the people to Babylon, the waiting was too much so in their telling of the story the children just picked up the people and began moving them to Babylon like Superman.

A helper was on-hand, gently reminding them: "Remember? That's not how the story goes. It took them a long time to go. They couldn't just hop over the river. They went around it."

With that, I was happy to see that the children slowed down a bit and took time to be faithful to the waiting-story.

Our goal in this little exercise was to help the kids feel the "dissonance" of waiting. Waiting is one of those things that cannot be taught by just talking about it. In our day and age we are not accustomed to waiting for anything. We are told that people have a short attention span nowadays so it's our job to make sure they don't get bored. "Keep it moving." But waiting is good for our soul and there is no sound-bite shortcut to this. We can't learn waiting by some clever technique of not-waiting. We can only learn the value of waiting by waiting. It takes time. We don't like it, but that does not change the fact that waiting takes time. Making friends with this kind of waiting is one of the best things we could ever do for ourselves or encourage others to do. May we learn to wait.

don't hurry, be happy

It is wise to submit to Master Grace. To live under the reign of grace is to practice patience and patience has its own wisdom.

For example, I needn’t speed when I am driving if I am practicing gracious patience. I needn’t be in a hurry about anything. A few days ago I was with someone who had trouble with this. He was going a full 20 miles per hour over the speed limit in traffic that was heading towards the city, growing heavier and heavier with each half-mile. The fast lane had been his permanent driving lane for the previous hundred miles, so as we approached the city he tailgated whoever was in the fast lane in hopes of blowing through more quickly. A slower-moving van happened to impede his progress so he crammed up the van’s butt and tried flashing his lights to get the van to move over a lane. No response.

Two lanes over looked free and clear. This was the slow lane but if he could just pass this cluster of cars he could get back into his fast lane in no time. He decided to give it a try.

The stretch of road was downhill. He pushed the pedal to the floor and proceeded at 85 or 90 in a 65. I said, “Hey, now…slow down, buddy.”

And then we saw it: a police car waiting in the wings. He was marked and got a ticket for 225 dollars—money he could ill-afford to go without.

Then, he grew angry. Angry at himself for speeding, angry at the law: “You can go faster here without danger so why does the speed limit have to be so low?! It should be 75, not 65!”

But, why do we need to be in such a hurry? We did not even have a deadline to keep and still we were in a hurry.

What if we learned--really learned--to rest in grace? There would be no reason to hurry and anger would lose its legs. Entitlement would be crucified and we would be free to enjoy life at a meter fit for music.

Let us live in grace
as we practice patience
so we may live wisely.

“A patient man has great understanding, but a quick tempered man displays folly." –Proverbs 14:29