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Someone’s dying, Lord

Linda Moore Spencer

Prayer is dialogue, or it is not prayer. At those times when prayer does not come easily, I have been known to ask God for activity, for marching orders. “Tell me what to do. I am too restless here.” And God answers, in one voice or another, in a flash or after days and days. He answers with an impulse, a thought, an odd idea – often as not, one I have never had before.

“Dear heavenly Father, tell me what to do,” I pray in this early morning hour, sitting in my chilly study with a scratchy blanket on my lap. “Please, God, time weighs heavily on me.”

“Look at the clock,” His soft voice says to me. “Someone is dying at this moment.” I sit up straighter, shiver slightly, pull the blanket closer. “Someone is dying,” His voice says. “Pray for her, for her immortal soul, for her salvation and safe passage, for peace, My peace, at the last.”

I sit for several minutes praying for a stranger, for somebody God created and watched over for a lifetime. Then a new idea occurs to me: Someone will die in precisely 37 minutes. I look up at the clock. It is 6:28. Someone will die at 7:05 on the dot. “Sit here with Me those 37 minutes,” the Voice comes again. “Pray that soul home.”

I lift that life to God in prayer, and then it hits me – what if that soul is me? What if I have been given notice of my death, a premonition of my end? Somebody dies every minute of the day. One minute, one day, will be mine.

I shudder with a sudden fear, and then I really pray, the way I seldom do – first for myself, and then, without any thought, I’m praying for everyone I know, every person on this earth that I hold dear. The minutes pass, the circle widens. I am praying for people whom I hardly know, and each one I pray for as I would if that soul were slated to die this cold November morning at 7:05 a.m.

When I have done praying, I look at the clock. 7:06. It’s over. The hour has come and passed. I am alive and well. Time to get on with my day. But oh how fervently I prayed this morning!

Samuel Johnson said that the prospect of being hanged in the near future concentrates the mind wonderfully. So might the knowledge of our mortality inform our prayers, enlarge our gratitude for our salvation and fortify our intercession for the world Christ died to save.

Linda Moore Spencer is a freelance writer from Northampton, Mass.

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Last modified January 14, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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