Please pray for Malala Yousafzai

I had sketched a reflection on stewardship to include here, but that will have to wait. Or perhaps these words will address stewardship - albeit from a different perspective.

  

Please pray for Malala Yousafzai, a fourteen year old Pakistani girl intentionally shot in the head and neck by members of the Taliban. Her attackers shot two other girls as well, but Malala was the target. The would-be assassins deemed it best to risk several lives than to miss an opportunity to kill an offender like Malala. What crime did she commit? She attends school and hopes eventually to study medicine, and three years ago she started a blog in which she advocates education for girls. The Taliban has charged her with promoting secularism and has promised to attack again if she survives. Please pray for the physical, spiritual, and emotional recovery of Malala and her friends, as well as for their families and communities.

  

Because we follow Jesus, God calls us to pray for the would-be assassins as well. Please pray not only for them to be found and held accountable for their crime, but also for God to soften their hearts. It is not easy for me to pray for them. Nor can I honestly say that I believe they will repent. Yet, when we refuse even to pray for such people, we risk becoming more like them. Every life is precious, even the lives of those who seem to deserve punishment and need God's transforming touch more than most of us.

That makes this a matter of stewardship. Stewardship, biblically and theologically, refers not simply or primarily to finances, but to the management of our lives. How do we manage our lives and follow Jesus faithfully in the face of the attack on Malala and so many other violent and evil acts? How do we continue to hope?

We hope because we believe that we are not left to ourselves. We may wrestle to comprehend God, but we believe that all that is exists in God and that God draws all that is toward wholeness. When praying for Malala I give thanks more than ever that I believe in God. The weight of feeling utterly alone would be more than I can bear. That does not make the assault on Malala or other evil less powerful, but it challenges and calls me to resist.

We express our hope by longing for God's way and will enough to pray for the just and the unjust. We offer prayers for both because we ache for a world shaped by love more than by hatred, by transformation more than retaliation, by common good more than partisan gain. The path to such a world often leads uphill, but all other paths lead nowhere worth discovering.

We express our hope by reflecting on the community most dear to us and on our own attitudes and actions and by pondering where we most need to repent. In Jesus' words, we seek help in removing the logs from our own eyes. I'd like to think that neither I nor those dear to me would ever do something as heinous as the attack on Malala. Yet, Paul truthfully reminds us that we all sin. We need God to help the best in us prevail over our worst.

What good will praying do? Prayer shapes the life and community of the one praying and the impact of praying graciously spreads beyond that person and community to all those touched by them. That makes it critical to pray for goodness, wholeness, forgiveness, and peace for all. Not everyone wants our touch, but if our touch reaches them, may it for their good and not for evil. Evil needs no help, but we all need the help goodness alone can bring.

Grace and Peace,

LP