Laying it before the Lord

My friend Joyce (not her real name) teaches math in a public high school. Her custom at the beginning of class time is to put a problem on the blackboard for the kids to work on in silence, her way of assessing what they have processed of the previous day's instruction.

On this particular day they did more socializing than wrestling with the pre-calculus, and Joyce told them they were wasting her time. Some days later, she learned through another colleague that a mother of one of the students had composed an email that she broadcast to the parents of all the other students in the class and to the rest of the faculty (but not to Joyce) to the effect that Joyce had told the students, "You are all a waste of time," and a few other such distortions.

Joyce did not know what to do. She took a copy of the letter and laid it out (physically) before the Lord-though, of course, she knew that the Lord already knew of the existence of the letter. And she prayed, asking God for help.

The vice principal convened a meeting, at which Joyce appeared with a union representative, and the student (who happened to be failing math) appeared with his mother and another advocate from a club to which he belonged. By the end of the meeting, Joyce had been vindicated.

The incident reminded me of the time when another servant of God, this one in the mid eighth century B.C., was in similar distress over a terrifying letter. This particular correspondence was from King Sennacherib of Assyria and it threatened the annihilation of Israel:

"Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD and spread it before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said: 'O LORD the God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. . . . So now, O LORD our God, save us, please, for his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O LORD, are God alone'" (2 Kings 19:14-19).

The prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah with a message from God that He had heard his prayer. God reassured the king of His divine power and absolute sovereign control in this threatening situation. He promised Hezekiah that not an arrow would be shot in the direction of Israel. That night He sent the angel of the Lord into the camp of the Assyrians and struck down 185,000 of them.

It is not necessary, of course, to lay out on the floor before God a letter that He already sees. But I myself have been moved to do that kind of thing on occasion, and something about it feels so right. Maybe it is more for my sake than God's. Maybe it is part of becoming like a child (Matthew 18:3).

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