Prayer is Doing Something

The Point by Colson Center

As more and more haunting images emerge from the airport in Kabul. Parents are passing children through lines of strangers in hopes they will be able to escape the Taliban, Young girls are gripping fences, crying out “The Taliban is coming!”, and we hear more and more reports from the ground that our worst fears about the Taliban are indeed coming true, many of us sit, watching these images, reading these stories on our phones, imagining ourselves and our own families in these same position. We can’t even begin to understand what any of this is like. We feel compelled to do something. We feel that our country has let them down.

I saw a tweet yesterday from a mom that describes many of the same feelings that we have. “Sometimes,” she said, “I’m mad at God that all he lets me do is pray about a situation that is out of my hands. I suppose that says more about me, and my frustration with prayer, than it says about God.”

Many of us ask, “other than prayer, what can I do?” What if it’s true that prayer is doing something, that prayer actually moves the heart of God and can alter human history?

We do have a responsibility for what’s happening in Afghanistan. There’s a lot of things we can’t do, but there’s one thing we can do and we must do, both for the Christians on the ground and for the vulnerable citizens. That is to ask God for mercy and to end their suffering now.