Prayer and the Press

Around us swirl accusations and counter-accusations. Empires and governments seem unsafe. Where does power reside? Where is there safety?

True power lies with God, and the person in prayer knows more about power than anyone (albeit it a very special sort of power, true power, not  usurped power.

Eugene Peterson is poignant in his book on Revelation, Reversed Thunder:

'Out of the silence, action developed: an angel came before the altar of God with a censer. He mixed the prayers of the Christians with incense (which cleansed them from impurities) and combined them with fire (God's spirit) from the altar. Then he put it all in the censer and threw it over heaven's ramparts. The censer, plummeting through the air, landed on earth. On impact there were "peals of thunder, voices, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake (Rev 8:5). The prayers, which had ascended, unremarked by the journalists of the day, returned with immmense force - in George Herbert's phrase, as "reversed thunder". Prayer reenters history with incalculable effects. Our earth is shaken daily by it.'

- Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder, Ch 7 (a commentary on Revelation, relating to Revelation 8:1-5. I am not quite sure if I would interpret the phrase 'reversed thunder' as  he does. He seems to suggest it is the prayer returning to earth; I think George Herbert in the poem from which the phrase come - see below -  has in mind that prayer is thunder rising from the earth to the heavens cp thunder which comes from 'heaven' to earth. But the  introduction of the image is helpful and it is easy to adapt Peterson appropriately.)

It is worth quoting George Herbert's wonderful poem Prayer (1) which Eugene Peterson refers to in the phrase "reversed thunder":

Prayer (I)

Prayer the Church’s banquet, Angels’ age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinners’ tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world-transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood
The land of spices; something understood.