You may recall that I read about a lady in Guideposts magazine who had made a resolution to pray for a different stranger each day. I wrote an article about her for the newsletter about 2 years ago. Since then, I bought the book,
Praying for Strangers
by River Jordan, and I found it hard to put down. Here are just a few stories from her book.
I have been praying for strangers since this resolution began more than three years ago. What started as a spark of an idea became a yearlong commitment; then, instead of ending as neatly as I had planned, it continued. I continued praying for the lost, lonely, beautiful, aged, famous, and forgotten. As I did so, something happened along the way. I began to change...slowly...in ways imperceptible...day by day....stranger by stranger. Somewhere along the way, I woke up. Now everywhere, people like you are doing the same thing. They are opening their eyes and hearts to the human condition, caring in a new way, and always remembering one special soul. We indeed are all in this together.
I was lying on a blanket in Bicentennial Park. A woman approached me carrying a multitude of bags. She asked if I had a dollar to spare. I'm usually good for a dollar, but on this day, I had no dollars to give...not even a dime. She put down her bags and shuffled through her jeans. She said, "God have mercy on me when I don't have something to give. Let me help you out." So she pulled out a worn dollar from her jeans and rattled out coins from half a dozen pockets. I started to protest, but she pulled up her pant leg and showed me her metal leg trailed by her metal foot. "Lost in a wreck," she said. Then, she asked me my name and told me hers: Esther.
I offered to pray for her. It was the least I could do. After all, I was and am a believer. What else could I do for a homeless person with one leg when I had no food or money on me? I remember Esther praying for me...a high-and-mighty, somebody-sure-is-listening prayer...a somebody-who-had-read-the-Bible prayer...an open-handed prayer. Esther prayed for this pilgrim with all her heart. As she walked off, she said, "Remember me in your prayers." Then she praised God for something I couldn't hear and lifted her hands to the sky.
There was just me and Esther caught in a moment in the park. A simple slice of time where one human being met another...that moment of stranger-to-stranger acknowledging that we were alive and the same in spite of everything. That we were sisters with stories to tell. That we could pass a few minutes, or even hours, in one another's company and both be the better for it.
Later that night, I stepped inside a church and placed Esther's money in the offering. I was thinking of how the smallest gift could be counted as the greatest. Someone offering everything they had, even when it added up to so little, could be the greatest gift of all. Esther's dollar reeked of selflessness given with an open palm and unclenched hand. As I dropped that wrinkled dollar in the offering plate, I prayed for miracles for Esther. When I lie in my warm bed, I pray to keep Esther warm, give her food, and keep her safe.
Strange things are happening even as my mind is heavy with events around me. I began watching people in stores, too. What I see overwhelms me. That grandmother over there on those old, tired feet in the freezing cold. That mother slowly counting out her money in the checkout line, nervous that she has too little. That man that looks like he has everything money can buy yet his face is pinched with worry. How can I possibly choose just one stranger a day when from the looks of things, EVERYONE needs prayer.
Somehow I've managed to cross paths with a person in a gas station, a motel, a restaurant, who stood out to me in such a way that I knew a silent prayer might help the situation they were facing. For this resolution, I feel like I'm supposed to be sensitive to one significant, special person every day. One day, I just knew that this lady at a bus station was my stranger for the day. I feel I am not only supposed to pray for her but to TELL HER that I am praying for her. I start to tell her about my resolution, and she grabs me and hugs my neck. "Do you know what I was just saying to God this morning? I asked the Lord if there was anybody in this whole wide world who is praying for me." "Looks like I am," I say. She said that now she would have a good journey home, and she's wearing a big smile. God answered her and used me in the process.
The incident in the bus station makes me feel like I've tapped into something tangible and real, realizing there is a purpose larger than I am. Okay, then purposes are fulfilled. It gives me a warm sense of humble satisfaction. My prayers are worth something to a stranger. Plus, now that stranger is worth something to me. How much does it really take for any of us to slow down to attune ourselves to the human condition, to look for another soul passing through our little universe that might need a word of encouragement? If we only knew how important we are to each other. Even as....particularly as...strangers.
submitted by
Dana Gatti
New World Intercessory Prayer Ministry
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