Friday 16 May 2008

To blog or to pray?

Sometimes I think about whether to blog or to pray about some pressing matter, and I realize that it is more effective just to pray.

It's one of the difficulties about talking about Christian inaction in the face of certain issues, especially political ones. For those who have a strong trust that God keeps his word, we are persuaded by that word that the most effective 'action' of all is to ask God for things.

Now this doesn't preclude the possibility of other action being taken as well. But it does mean that a great deal more might be happening that is unseen than our meagre minds can think or imagine.

Zechariah 4:10 says " For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel." It's about the rebuilding of Jerusalem, which will be effective against massive political odds because the LORD has decided that it will happen. The plumb line in Zerubbabel's hand is the sign that the small thing will grow into the big thing.

Prayer is smaller than a plumb line, but the God who stands behind it is a great God. v 10 continues "These seven are the eyes of the LORD, which range through the whole earth."

That's a rather random cogitation and not really a model for how you read Zechariah 4.

(which I'm reading at the moment. If you forced me to explain I'd say my talk of prayer and plumb lines was a tangential application that highlights the key idea of the passage, which is that God sovereignly achieves everything he ever sets out to do, in accordance with his word)

But it struck me that it was more important to blog about prayer than about Burma, just this morning.

And also to pray.

2 comments:

Ben said...

Good point, mate.

Mattt said...

To blog or to study?

Or even pray about how to do both!