Prayer power

A railroad track skirts one edge of the nature trail park where we like to walk. Sometimes, a train rumbles past, and my husband starts counting aloud the number of cars behind the engines. The more cars behind, the greater the engine power needed up front.

My first thought was of the energy I need for the busy days when I have lots on my to-do list, including the privilege of caring for a busy, curious toddler grandson. As a friend of mine likes to say, “I’m not complaining, just explaining.” I also thought about the prayer burdens so many of us carry. Historians tell us that the great Protestant reformer Martin Luther practiced long prayer before each day.  He reportedly said, “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day.” 

Two hours! I'm no "Luther." But I do find time drags when I get bogged down praying for people with difficult issues. Yet, when I simply sit and praise God for who He is and thank Him for what He has done and is going to do, time passes without my thinking of it. The power of praise and adoration was also a favorite topic of Nazi concentration camp survivor and inspirational writer/speaker Corrie ten Boom. She wrote, “Be sure you remain covered with a canopy of praise.  It is like a tent over and around you. Satan has no entrance as long as you pin down the sides by praying, and thank God for His wonderful promises.”(1)

Admonitions to praise God go way, way back.  In her book Karen! Karen!, author/speaker Karen Mains quoted from a translation of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, giving instructions for those living in the long-ago hermetic desert community: 
As long as I live, it shall be a rule engraved on my tongue to bring praise like fruit for an offering and my lips as a sacrificial gift.
As the scroll continues, it instructs adherents to recite the Ten Commandments morning and evening, and bless God's name continually as the day progresses, not just before meals. From life's daily rhythms, the writer moved to harder things:
When fear and terror come, and there is only anguish and distress, I will still bless and thank Him for His wondrous deeds, and meditate upon His power, and lean upon His mercies all day long. For I know that in His hand is justice for all that live, and all His works are true. So when trouble comes, or salvation,  I praise Him just the same.(2)

To borrow the train analogy, if I have enough “engines” of praise up front, it’s easier to pull the loads (“problems”) behind. Praise also reminds me that it's not all about "me pulling the load," but turning these concerns and "impossibilities" over to God. He's the Engineer and the source of Power,  not me!

(1)Corrie ten Boom, Her Story (New York: Inspiration Press, 1995), p. 446.
(2) Karen Mains, Karen! Karen! (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1979), pp. 148-49.