Oh Me of Little Faith

I was exhausted this morning at church (and after) and was looking forward to lunch with Diane and two friends. As I was walking Psalter’s friend Aleyah home before we left for lunch, a man on the street called out, “Pastor! I need to speak with you.” He occasionally comes  to the Wednesday night dinners at our church, and he had a rent situation – $55 due by tomorrow and no steady work. I knew that our church could not pay the $55, and I didn’t have work around my house for him to earn it. So I told him that “all I could do” was pray with him, and he and his girlfriend and I prayed there in the street. Yeah, that’s all I can do. I can’t fix it but I can go to the God of the universe and ask Him to do something. All I can do.

In my heart it was sort of like a Hail Mary, the type you throw in football not the Catholic prayer. I just tossed that prayer up, hoped it would be caught, and went on my way to lunch.

Three hours later I was in the yard playing with the kids and the man walked by and said, “You’ll never guess what happened. A woman called me this afternoon and has work for me tomorrow night!”

And honestly, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I did believe it, but I was amazed that God had heard my prayer, as feeble as it was.

The only remaining catch was that his landlord wasn’t  going to give him until Tuesday morning (when he would get paid) to get the money. So we clasped hands again on the sidewalk and asked God to move in his landlord’s heart. Sadly, I’m not sure that my faith was much more confident this time than in our first prayer time, but I knew that God can do a lot with a little from me. I’m not downplaying the role of faith in our prayers, but I think that the power of our prayers has way more to do with the One that we pray to than whether our faith is up to snuff that day. My confidence isn’t in the answer, it’s in the fact that He hears and He knows.