BY JONATHAN TOBIAS
Editor’s NOTE: It’s a sunny day out, so let’s start on a positive note with this column from Jonathan, a North Carolina Press Association award winning columnist.
After years of making resolutions on New Year’s Day – and years of dropping them just a few weeks later on Groundhog Day – I’ve given up the business of making resolutions. I’ve opted for prayer instead. So consider this a “trigger warning” – these next few paragraphs are going to sound overwhelmingly religious (so apologies to my agnostic and non-Christian friends).
Nowadays, I try to “pray without ceasing,” as St Paul recommended to the Thessalonians. I don’t come up to that mark, honestly, as I get distracted and get occupied with other things. Sometimes, those “other things’ weigh heavily, and prayer becomes hard. But I take heart in the fact (and I know it’s true) that whenever prayer is hard, it is often most efficacious.
So here is a partial list of what I’ve been praying for of late:
That our Father in heaven will quench the raging fires in California. That He will care for Sasha (the niece of a friend of mine) who lost her house and daycare center, and the many thousands of people who have lost their homes. That He will protect and guide Governor Newsom and all the leaders and firefighters and helpers as they work tirelessly in fighting the firestorm, in rescue and later rebuilding. Hundreds of those firefighters, by the way, are from Mexico and Canada.
That He will quench the fires and say “Peace be still” to the demented winds that fan the inferno, that He will open the firmament and send His gentle rain.
That our Father will establish His peace, His righteousness, His justice, and His wisdom in this land. That He will silence the mouths of rage, injustice and oppression, fear and irrationality.
That our Father will grant healing and strength to so many people who are so ill and hurt right now. In my prayerbook, I have a long list (that seems to be getting longer as I get older). I envision Jesus of John 5 at the healing pool of Bethesda: He approaches them, lays His hand upon them, and says “Rise up and walk.” Sometimes, I think of Him as bending down, smiling, holding out His hand, and saying, “Why don’t you just come home with Me? That will be best.”
That our Father will let fall, like the “latter rain,” His peace and reason and His tenderheartedness upon our little community, because there’s another inferno raging outside — this one needs neither oxygen nor wood. So I pray that He will build a tide of protection against the virulence of enmity and madness.
That our Father will fill us with care and compassion. That He will remove the scales from our eyes, so that we can recognize the face of Jesus in every single human being around us, face to face or in the news. That we will notice the hand of the Creator in every creature and all Creation.
That our Father will “hallow His Name,” that His Kingdom will come here, so that His Will — which is and always will be only a good Will — be done in this troubled earth …
… just as it is in His heaven, which is wherever Jesus is. Because that is exactly what heaven is:
Him.