Harold
Hackett, a 58 year old man from Prince Edward Island, has an interesting
hobby. Over the past fifteen years, he
has tossed more than 5 000 “messages-in-a-bottle” into the Gulf of the St.
Lawrence with hopes that they will make their way to the Atlantic Ocean. He has since received about 3100 responses
from people in places like Iceland, the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Germany,
and as far away as Africa and South America.
One bottle even made it to the Pacific Ocean, somehow landing in San
Francisco. Recently, he received a reply
from one of the first bottles that he threw overboard. It took fifteen years for the bottle to wash
ashore, to be found and then responded to and that is what makes it interesting
to him. You never know how long it will
take or from where you will receive your response.
Upon
hearing that story, someone pointed out to me that tossing bottles in the ocean
is somewhat similar to what we experience when we pray. Our prayers, like Harold’s bottles, have
specific ideas and messages in them.
Once the prayer is “thrown overboard” we wait. We have no control over where the reply will
come from or how long it will take to be received. Sometimes it may take years for us to receive
the answer or to see the blessings of the circumstance.
That,
thankfully, is where the similarity ends, though. You see, our prayers take a much more direct
path than do Harold’s messages. While
the bottles aimlessly float around the ocean until they happen to be found, we
are assured that our prayers are not only heard, but are acted upon.
About
prayer, Jesus says, “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who
knocks, the door will be opened” (Luke 11:9-10).
Even more
importantly, our prayers are not only directed to God, but they are supplemented
by Christ and the Holy Spirit. “In the
same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to
pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words
cannot express (Romans 8:26). To
“intercede” means to “to plead on another’s behalf” and that is what the Holy
Spirit and Jesus do for us. “Christ
Jesus… is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Romans
8:34).
It may take a while and we may
not always get the answer that we want, but be assured that prayer is worth the
effort.
God always hears and always
responds.
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