One of my boys has a piggy bank – a proper, hollow pig with a slot in the top and a wiggly tail. The other lad however has a ‘robo-bank’. When you pop your pocket money in its head it says ‘thank you’, sounding just like Stephen Hawking. And whenever the robot’s sensors pick up movement in the room it announces ‘YOU HAVE ALMOST REACHED YOUR TARGET!’ This can be quite disconcerting late at night when I tiptoe into the room to tuck the boys into bed. Heaven only knows how often the robot exhorts the hamster to continue saving.
I’ve been thinking lately that prayer and faith can be a lot like saving pennies. Partly because it generally takes perseverance before we see miracles, but mainly because faith seems to accumulate the more we celebrate the small things God has done. Stories of answered prayer can increase our expectation, and the more we expect miracles the more we will experience the reality of the supernatural realm. It’s a righteous cycle of faith that flourishes in a culture of affirmation and gratitude.
Last weekend my boys triumphantly discovered that they had saved enough money to buy their hearts’ desire: a Nintendo Wii. Perseverance in the day of small things had come to a glorious – and previously impossible – conclusion.
Sometimes, of course, miracles take a little less perseverance. After sentencing David Joseph to prison sentences in a number of States, the US government discovered that he was in fact a British Citizen. They wasted no time in kicking this persona non grata out of the country, sending him back to England where he arrived at Heathrow airport jobless and penniless. David came to a prayer meeting I was leading at Holy Trinity Brompton church in London on a Tuesday morning last September, and asked the Lord to provide him with work, specifically in the construction industry. Many people think that it’s pointless to pray about such very practical things – especially in a recession, with a man who has a criminal record. But we prayed because we believe that God has a purpose for David’s life, that God never gives up on anyone, and that he promises to provide for all our needs.
Within ten minutes of that prayer meeting, as David Joseph walked to the nearby underground train station, he was offered a job, in construction, by a complete stranger. He’d received a miracle and five months later he’s still working there and still worshipping God.
Over Christmas many prayers went up for the musician, Charles Costa, who was in a critical situation in an Austrian hospital after a very serious skiing accident that could easily have left him brain damaged. Two months later neurologists are simply amazed by the extent of Charles’ recovery. ‘We believe it was prayer that made the difference’ concludes his father, ‘and we’re just so grateful for such support’.
Last Saturday night hundreds of people crammed into a church in Edinburgh Scotland to cry out for the nation and to commission the year of 24-7 Prayer which is taking place across Scotland right now. The Tuesday before that 800 people packed Holy Trinity Brompton on a day of prayer and fasting. It was the sort of prayer meeting we associate with other countries or other times in history; not with the part of London where they filmed Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill! One man wrote in to say: ‘I had tears running down my face and a sense of the power of God inside me.’ In that electric atmosphere God spoke about his Church being a lion that must roar once again in the land and about impacting Europe.
Such ‘big’ words can seem daunting as we go about our normal lives. But as we continue to celebrate small encouragements – dropping pennies into that heavenly piggy bank – we might imagine the clouds parting from time to time and a voice that sounds a bit like Stephen Hawking reminding us: ‘You have almost reached your target’.
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