Slow Pray the News

"We should pray with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other." I have heard this quote many times but was never sure who originally said it. Billy Graham said something like this regarding his preaching. Some have attributed the quote to theologian Karl Barth. If it truly came from Barth, it was only a part of a bigger message he was trying to get across. Barth would not advocate that we alternate between the Bible and the newspaper, weighing them both to decide which is most important. Instead, he would have us read the Bible first, trying to understand today's events in light of God's bigger plan in history.

photo from catholicdialogue.com

Praying through the newspaper can be a great spiritual exercise. But with all the bad news, we often run out of words to lift up as intercessions. "Lord, make this better" gets old after a while. This is another way that the Church of England has helped us all by creating the Book of Common Prayer. Its forms of prayer are all written through the perspective of scripture, and they give us words to pray when we have run out of our own.

For instance, the rite for Evening Prayer lists these prayers (known as suffrages) on pages 121-122:

V.    Show us your mercy, O Lord; 

R.    And grant us your salvation. 

V.    Clothe your ministers with righteousness; 

R.    Let your people sing with joy. 

V.    Give peace, O Lord, in all the world; 

R.    For only in you can we live in safety.

V.    Lord, keep this nation under your care; 

R.    And guide us in the way of justice and truth. 

V.    Let your way be known upon earth; 

R.    Your saving health among all nations. 

V.    Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten; 

R.    Nor the hope of the poor be taken away. 

V.    Create in us clean hearts, O God; 

R.    And sustain us by your Holy Spirit.

The prayers in the BCP are meant to be read together as a congregation, but they work great in your personal prayer life too. Pray for "saving health among the nations" for Liberia and Sierra Leone. Pray that the "hope of the poor" not be taken away in the midst of changes to MedicAid. "Give peace, O Lord, in all the world" is especially appropriate for Syria and Iraq these days.

Connecting the words of these tried-and-true prayers to real-life events takes some time, causing us to slow down and think about what's really going on around us. Rather than offering up a quick prayer without much thought, laying the newspaper beside the BCP helps us see the world's events in a scriptural way.

Just in case you wondered where the title for this blog post came from, and you have not seen this clip yet...