Ask the Editor: A time to pray

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, October 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, Ask the Editor for November. Here’s WORLD Radio executive producer Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: More than 40 years ago WORLD founder Joel Belz wrote a column encouraging readers to see our stories as something more than just “keeping up with the news.” In 2013 Joel recorded that commentary. Here’s about two minutes from it:

JOEL BELZ, FOUNDER: Wasn’t that a wonderful answer to prayer!” exclaimed someone after a remarkable development.

“Indeed it was,” responded an overly honest friend. “Don’t you wish we had prayed about it?”

I first mentioned that exchange in a magazine column almost 30 years ago. It’s a little embarrassing now to admit I still haven’t fully learned the lesson.

A sovereign God doesn’t need us, of course, to help unfold world events. He is quite capable of keeping the Middle East from total conflagration, or softening the cruelty of human traffickers in big American cities, or comforting families of loved ones killed in an accident. He is quite capable of doing all that, and more, without us.

The wonder is that God could do all that alone, but that He chooses not to. Instead, He calls on us to participate. The King of the universe invites us to sit in on His cabinet meetings. The tragedy is that we so rarely accept that invitation.

Even when we do pray, pray too generally. If your petition is a very broad “Give wisdom to all the world’s leaders,” you’ll probably be hard-pressed to recognize the Lord’s answer when He sends it. 

With all that in mind, let me invite you to use this news program, The World and Everything in It, as a very practical and specific kind of prayer list. When you sit down to eat and thank the Lord for a meal, take another minute to pray for one news item you’ve heard about on this program. Such a habit might well provide good mealtime conversation with your family.

Or, to take all this a significant step further, think about helping organize a small group that might meet during the Sunday school hour at your church. Find half a dozen or a dozen people who would enjoy discussing world events — and then take God seriously by joining with each other in 15-20 minutes of specific prayer for those issues.

Either way — whether at home or in such a small group on Sunday morning — you’ll never have to worry about hearing someone say with disappointment and remorse: “What a great answer to prayer! It’s just too bad we never took time to pray about it.”

I’m Joel Belz.

PAUL BUTLER: And now to give you a chance to live that out a bit. After a very long and contentious presidential campaign season, we are finally approaching election day. Next week we’ll have a lot of stories from on the ground reporters and expert analysts, but in the spirit of Joel’s encouragement, I want to make sure we include something more—a call to prayer.

On a number of occasions in the past, we’ve had you send in prayers and scripture readings to include at the end of our program. We’d like to do that again a few times next week. Would you consider recording a short reading or prayer for our country, for God’s work in and through this election, and more importantly, for spiritual renewal across our land—regardless who wins or loses?

Send your audio recordings to: editor@wng.org. Please keep them short, as we’d like to include as many of them as we can. Also, when you record, please start by identifying yourself by name, and identify where you live. We may not be able to feature all of them, but we’ll play as many as we can. That email address again is: editor@wng.org.

Thanks. I’m Paul Butler.

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