Afterthought

“Oh, before you leave, I just wanted to tell you something,” the owner of the Christian bookstore we were in yesterday commented. “A customer was in here the other day, and he told me that your church had prayed for us when he was in service recently!” We have a custom of praying for a missionary and a local pastor and church or ministry every Sunday morning, and my husband had named the bookstore as he led in prayer that day. They have a regular prayer meeting and special speakers in a large room at the back of their store. “The man was so excited about that,” she went on, “and so touched that he had tears in his eyes.”

“That’s remarkable,” Howard responded, “Just yesterday someone told me something similar. I had met some people from another church at a function one night last week, and I mentioned their church in prayer on Sunday.” He went on, “I didn’t know some of them were present that morning visiting with family who attends, until I was told how pleased they were that we had prayed for them and their pastor.”

“You know just a few words of prayer or thoughtfulness go a long way,” our friend remarked, “you never know the effect of just a little seed that is planted and how it might affect someone.” She went on to explain that she makes it a practice to pray a blessing over each Bible that is sold in her store. She said that one day as she was doing that, a customer came in, but rather than quit praying, she went on, while the customer busied himself browsing through books. Later, he seemed a little stand-offish, and she wondered if she had offended him.

A few days later, a lady came in and bought a Bible. As she was thanked and handed the purchase and receipt, the woman hesitated and said, “Aren’t you going to pray? My friend was here the other day and said he heard you praying over a Bible.” The man had been paying attention, after all!

She told of another time when she had been working on bookkeeping upstairs when her employee called up to her that a person wanted a blessing prayed on the Bible she had just bought. Since the proprietor was recovering from a car accident injury and not wanting to go back down the stairs, she responded to the cashier, herself a devout Christian, “Well, I’m in the middle of something, so you go ahead and pray.” The customer quickly called out, “No! I want you to pray!” Turns out that several of her family had received her prayer-blessings on their Bibles, and she didn’t want to break the chain of continuity.

“Pastors are always being called upon to pray for others,” the bookstore owner reflected, “So it probably meant a lot for that pastor to hear that you had prayed for him the other day. I know it meant a lot to me,” she concluded.

We know from what Jesus said in the Bible that prayers don’t have to be long to be effective, Matthew 6:5-7. It is not our much speaking and vain repetitions that he desires. A simple prayer from the heart is worth more than all the flowery words, and a little does go a long way.