Hope, Prayer, and Harvey

Fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. - Acts 27.29

Some translations say "wished." The Greek verb will bear either reading. Sometimes the difference isn't all that great.

In these days following Hurricane Harvey, as Rockport and Port Aransas lie leveled and Houston treads water, people of all faiths and of no faith cast what anchors we can and yearn for the dawning of some sort of good news. Boundaries between wishes and prayers, or between both of those and despair, sometimes lie awash beneath the oily murk of the flood. 

And still the waters rise and the rocks grow nearer, and still the dawn delays.

In his book The Table of Inwardness, Calvin Miler calls for the "Christifying" of such moments. He tells the true story of an Omaha priest who arrived on the scene of an accident in which a gasoline tanker pinioned a family in their car then burst into flames and roasted the occupants alive. The minister knelt near the holocaust and prayed. Miller observes: "'What good did it do?' That is not the issue. His prayer Christified the event." 

Of such moments Miller explains, "I write I.N.R.I. on the most tangled of circumstances. As soon as they are autographed with his name, they yield to meaning and to life." We must, he insists, envision "a world more real than this where God watches and cares and loves."

Whatever storm savages your ship, wherever it drives or maroons you, cast whatever anchors of action you can from the stern, gaze with whatever sight you can to the future, and kneel in between. If, in that moment, your praying seems more like wishing, don't worry. Claim the name of Christ over whatever you've got, and know that God's got you.