The following meditation was written by Dr. Leo S. Thorne, retired general secretary for mission resource development for the American Baptist Churches USA.
“I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these, brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.” Matthew 25:40
The humble walk of Jesus Christ on earth reveals that he spent a great deal of time in the company of everyday people, who heard him gladly. He fed them. He taught them. He healed their broken bodies. He preached the good news of the gospel to them. These ministry moments were interwoven into his life of prayer. He withdrew from the crowds and spent solitary moments praying to God, revealing a humbled and obedient heart.
“Jesus was intentional with prayer,” writes Doug Hood. “Jesus wove into the fabric of each day a time to be alone with God. . . . Prayer was an opportunity to link his life with the purposes of God.”[1] It seems as if there was a direct connection between Jesus’ prayer life and his involvement with the daily needs of the human family. Should our own intentional time in developing a prayer relationship with God also lead us outward to make ourselves available to serve the needs of others?
One morning our church secretary came into my office beaming with excitement and waving a colorful flier in her hand. She had stopped on her way to work at the local Deli to pick up her usual morning coffee and her whole wheat bagel. There was something about that flier which caught her attention. Thanksgiving Blessings of Hope was written in bold letters at the top. Provide a thanksgiving meal for a family in need was the invitation that followed. We will supply boxes and the list of items needed. For the next five years at Thanksgiving, this little church came alive! Blessings of Hope boxes grew from two boxes to 20, to 35, to 65, to 80. Church members who had not been active, young and older persons, men, women, strangers from the community external to the church claimed this needful activity as their own and joy-fully filled boxes.
Now here is the rest of the story. In the second year of this annual Thanksgiving box-filling, one of the rather quiet teenage members spontaneously stopped the group from doing their task. He said he had something to say to them. He told the group that during his nightly devotions, before going to bed, he was reading one of Jesus’ parables, the rather sobering one about the Judgment of the Sheep and Goats. This is the parable in which the king responded to a question from the righteous people who were surprised by their reward. You see, as the parable goes, these caring people had responded to the people’s needs by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming strangers, and visiting the sick and the prisoners.
The eye-opening thought that struck this teen were the words of Jesus that because they (the righteous) had responded to the needs of the least of these, it was as if they were serving Jesus himself. The young man concluded: “Let us stop and pray. And let us pack these boxes as if we were packing them for Jesus.” The atmosphere in that assembly hall was changed. It was as if a warm wind of holy excitement had entered that space and transformed the people. The American pastor and theologian Walter Rauscenbausch adds that these righteous people in Jesus’ parable thought that “they had done [actions of service] for folks – dirty, sweaty, tired discouraged individuals. But Jesus said, ‘Oh, no, ye did it unto me.’”[2] ² When this small suburban, New Jersey congregation began their Thanksgiving ministry, the church had an average weekly attendance of around 25 people at the Sunday worship service. In those five years the attendance tripled.
Might it be that as we seek to develop an ongoing prayer relationship with God, we may also want to have our ears and heart open to become more compassionate to the needs of people around us? When we pray: “Thy kingdom come,” as Jesus taught his disciples to pray, might we also want to talk with God during our time of prayer about our personal availability to serve Jesus by helping others in need? Should our prayer relationship with God also have an outward perspective to serve people in need? Who knows how such praying—for a neighbor with Alzheimer’s, people in war-torn areas, families with no health insurance, siblings in feud over dividing inheritances, daughters and sons battling addictions and drug use, the prisoner on death row—would guide and enrich our own time of prayer with God?
Joy,
[1] Hood, W. Douglas. A Month of Prayer: Five-Minute Meditations for a Deeper Experience of Prayer, Eugene: WIPF & Stock, 2023, 2.
[2] Dennis L. Johnson, To Live in God: Daily Reflections with Walter Rauschenbusch (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2020), 116
Nurture Faith with Dr. Doug Hood 