Praying Purposefully

Admin Thu 21 Jan 2016, 7:34 pm

Praying Purposefully
Reinhold Niebuhr often quoted a remark made to him by
an agnostic friend who objected to the church, "not
because of its dogmas but because of its trivialities,"
by which he meant preoccupation with trivial concerns
with the world hanging on the rim of disaster." Fred
Craddock was invited to attend a prayer meeting at a
home in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta. He said the group
shared "weighty" prayer concerns like a date coming up
on Friday night and the purchase of a new car, and one
man announced they had had 75 answered prayers since
the group started meeting.
Then one of them turned to him and asked, "What do you
think, Dr. Craddock?" Craddock, usually more reticent
to criticize anybody's praying, was offended by the
superficial and mechanistic reduction of Israel's God
to what Paul Tillich called, "the Cosmic Bellhop." He
couldn't help himself. He said, "Do you mean to tell me
when people are starving in Africa and the poor are
suffering in India and parents in Latin America can't
sleep through the night wondering if the death squads
will visit them, you folks are praying about dates and
new cars?"1
Ed. note. True, God is interested in the details of our
life, but let us not forget the greatest and most
urgent needs for prayer.
Dr. Larry Bethune, "Friends in High Places."
www.ubcaustin.org