Commentary: In need of prayer – by Don Kirkland

Early on a Sunday evening, our little band of missions volunteers was leaving for worship services in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Rain had left the steps in front of our hotel dangerously slick, and, heavily laden with equipment, I slipped, falling squarely on my shoulder. Several colleagues helped me back to my room. After saying I didn’t want a doctor, I lay down on the bed, determined never to move again if I could help it. Assured I would live, my friends left for their meetings. Later in the evening, they returned, coming as a group to my room.

Don Kirkland

They formed a ring around my bed and looked down at me – silently.

Finally, one of them said, “I really think somebody ought to pray for Don.”

At first pleased and greatly relieved, my spirits sagged a second later when the prospective prayer added, “But I don’t think it should be me.”

Well, somebody then, I thought to myself. And eventually, somebody did.

I was then, and am now, grateful for the prayers of others.

To know that I am prayed for is encouraging – and convicting, as well. Too often, I have failed to pray for others.

Walter Rauschenbusch, a late-19th-century pastor and seminary professor, said that there are three parties to prayer: God, one’s self, and one’s fellow man. “When we look into the face of God,” he said, “we see the face of our brother.”

Rauschenbusch was mostly deaf as a result of illness, but his soul was sensitive to the cries of his fellow human beings. “When traveling on railway trains alone,” he said, “I used to meditate on the life problems of people I saw. I then shut out of my mind everything else but the needs of those people.”

Prayer, even for ourselves, is never easy, and often requires more of us than we are willing to give. But what is the price we pay for its neglect?

Our lives have been underpinned by the prayers of others on our behalf.

No resource available to Christians is more important than prayer – honest-to-God prayer for ourselves and persistent prayer on behalf of others. Who among us is not standing in need of prayer?