PRAYING FOR OUR LEADERS

Have You Heard this One: “Due to the lack of production of great followers, the production of great leaders has been suspended”.

What You Might Expect Me to Say about Prayer for Leaders: Just pray! The leaders in your world can’t get by without it. Barack Obama needs you to; I need you to; and a lot of other leaders in your lives need you to, and God wants you to pray.

But that’s Not the Whole Story, Is it? Many of us don’t know how to pray. And many of us just don’t do it. And many of us would easily miss praying for many who lead us outside of a president or two.

Here’s Where I get in Trouble: Sure, sometimes we don’t pray because we doubt ourselves, or God, or we doubt those we might pray for, but the truth is most of us would be happy to pray for others if we had any rhythms of prayer at all. Beginning a pattern of prayer is hard for us who want everything do-able in three minutes or less. And sometimes we can only find the heart to pray for closest friends in a cocoon-like narrowness focused only on the world we can see out our front window, or maybe only within our walls.

But for a lot of us the problem is how. So, while I can’t set rhythms of prayer for you, here is an exercise as a suggestion or two about how to pray for leaders.

I recommend you start with your favored hand. Really. If you get out your hand and look at the fingers, that will help in this exercise, and it might be so helpful you could add it to your routines at a fixed point each day. Start with the thumb.

When I pray for those who lead, I take hold of my thumb and pray for the most important thing a leader has: integrity and caring. This is more important to leadership than any decision anyone can make. I pray that they will be whole in God.

After that, I take hold of my little finger and pray for the small subtleties that make a leader balanced. I pray for the environment they find themselves in and those who advise them.

Then I take hold of my ring finger and lift to God all who love the leader and ask that they find intimacy and power and forgiveness in their core family relationships.

Then I grasp my middle finger and … well, the fame of the middle finger is actually helpful to me when I pray. I remember all the obstacles and opponents who would destroy or diminish their work. I pray protection for leaders from those who would … well … middle finger them.

Then I pray with my first finger pointed. To the sky, maybe, sometimes tapping the chair I sit on to remember the firmness of a direction found. For example, I pray for my Bishop that he will know where the church needs to go and what he needs to point to for it to go there. I pray for his courage to keep pointing even when there is fog all around. I often find myself pointing in front of me, even if I don’t know what direction my leader should take. I just ask God to tell him!

Don’t Lie to Yourself: prayer is not bargaining with, or controlling, or controlling the world that God made so free that it finds ways to be wounded. And, uhhh, the real question is still going to be finding a rhythm and a hope for praying.

Oh, and by the way, when you find that rhythm, you will be so happy and grateful. And freer.

God loves you.

Go ahead, pray. Let your hopes go to work, and let them go wild.