The week before last Thursday's National Day of Prayer, a community organizer and choir director from Washington, D.C., attracted considerable news coverage with his public pleas that motorists pray for cheaper gasoline prices.
After leading prayer at a station in Washington, D.C., Rocky Twyman received additional coverage, including an interview with Fox News, after staging a similar event in San Francisco.
Not a ridiculous idea
I can hear the skeptics now, including some in the Church, who think a new president or government controls are the only hope of seeing lower prices at the pump. Indeed, Twyman's action drew hostile comments in one online atheist forum.
I might be skeptical myself, had I not written a story three years ago about the capture of "BTK," a notorious serial killer in Wichita, Kan.
This came less than seven weeks after a group of churches held a noon-hour meeting to pray for the capture of the assailant, who had eluded authorities for more than 30 years.
That isn't the kind of news that grabs headlines or leads off evening newscasts. Nor can one automatically trace cause-and-effect between a single prayer meeting and the successful capture of a multiple murderer.
Still, such results assure us that—though we may not understand the ways nor how God balances competing requests—prayer makes an impact. We pray because Christ told us to, in all circumstances.
Prices ripple past the pump
The effects of high gasoline prices ripple far beyond the pump, too, as anyone who stops in a grocery store these days realizes. Recently I saw a network newscast where a woman filling up her tank told a reporter, "We don't go out for dinner any more. We buy gas."
While high gasoline may be a pinch on consumers' household budgets, for others it signals dire straits. Not just impoverished people in the U.S., but for billions around the world who watch in dismay as their meager incomes barely buy enough food to keep them alive for another week.
The seriousness of the situation became apparent in mid-April, when President George Bush ordered the release of $200 million in U.S. emergency food aid to help alleviate world food shortages.
So there are reasons to pray for lower gasoline prices that go far beyond mere inconvenience or having to skip a restaurant dinner to fill up one's car.
Prayer with eternal purpose
When it comes to affluent Americans, prayer needs to extend beyond the price of petroleum. Already, there are predictions that gasoline is poised to experience the same kind of bubble that popped the housing market and sent over-priced real estate plummeting.
The Church needs to pray that people who place their trust in money, material goods, power, social prestige or any other inferior substitutes will awaken to the reality that the things of this world are all passing away.
As one observer noted in his blog, "Jesus never told a parable so that we would pray for a better deal in the marketplace, but to conform our passions to the passions of the Father. The misplaced priority reflected in the prayers from today's news are but an exaggeration of what we are guilty of when we give undo heart to time-bound concerns."
Every Church with a bus ministry, every food bank watching demand skyrocket and every wage earner pressed to make ends meet would like to see gasoline prices drop.
Yet, we also need to remember there are more eternal concerns that ought to occupy our attentions. Or, as Peter put it, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." (1 Pet. 3:15.)
