Some of you will remember when Clyde Beatty was the most famous lion tamer in the world. While Beatty was performing with THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH he also operated a small circus that played during the off-season. This circus was stationed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and because of the very favorable climate from December through March, performed in the open air, without a big top.
One day there was a heavy downpour and Beatty was forced to call off the show. Only one person had come to the box office to buy a ticket-a little old lady with a big umbrella and a bigger voice. When she was told that the performance had been canceled, she asked to see the manager. When he appeared she told him that she had paid her money and insisted on seeing the show. When he tried to refund her money, she refused it.
The manager called for Beatty. The little lady was growing more adamant all the time. She explained to Beatty that tomorrow she would be returning to Indiana. She had tried several times, she said, to catch the circus when he would be appearing with his lions but had missed him each time before. She had heard on the radio that the circus performed rain or shine, and that she was not leaving without seeing a complete performance. Beatty was left speechless. This had not been a light sprinkle. Water was everywhere. Like the manager he tried to return the lady ™s money, but she would have none of it. She was so insistent, so adamant, that finally Beatty caved in. (It is amazing how a man who can go into a cage of lions can be intimidated by one little, elderly lady.)
The show went on in spite of the downpour. Beatty ™s performers were furious with him. Imagine performing their acts and dodging pools of water. Imagine the time it took the clowns to put on their makeup to perform for an audience of one and then to see that makeup smear in the steady downpour. Even his animals seem to have a look of disgust on their faces, according to Beatty. The elephants loved the mud, but their keeper had to spend hours afterward hosing them down. The whole experience was one miserable mess. Of course, they had to make some unannounced cuts here and there, but finally they got through an entire performance, and Beatty felt pretty good about it. He had given the little lady what she asked for even if he had alienated all his performers in the meantime.
He felt pretty good about it until the little lady walked by him on the way out. "Humph," she said, "I thought there would be more to it than that!" (1)
That little lady reminds me of a little lady Jesus once told about. It seems there was a certain judge who neither feared God nor man. However, there was a certain widow who needed the judge to act in her behalf. At first he ignored her but she kept coming to him with her request. When he could no longer ignore her, he refused her, but she kept coming back. She was so persistent that finally he relented. "Otherwise," he said, "she will wear me out." Then Jesus said, "Hear what the righteous judge says. And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to Him day and night?"
The answer is, of course He will. He will hear their cry and He will answer. Now Jesus is not giving us a methodology for prayer. He is not saying to us that if there is something we want, just keep asking until we wear God down. He is not saying that. He is, however, acknowledging some important truths about our relationship with God.
FIRST OF ALL, THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY PRAYING NIGHT AND DAY. They are desperate for God ™s help. Every waking hour they are silently petitioning His intervention. Some of you have been there. You know what it is to bang furiously on God ™s door.
Life is cruel. In "Oh God, Book II," George Burns, playing the part of God, is asked by a tiny girl why bad things happen. Burns thoughtfully considers her question and then replies. "That ™s the way the system works...Have you ever seen an up, without a down? A front, without a back? A top, without a bottom? You can ™t have one without the other. I discovered that if I take away sad, then I take away happy, too. They go together." Then, with a smile, he adds, "If somebody has a better idea, I hope they put it in the suggestion box." (2)
We don ™t know why life is cruel, but sometimes it is. And the most frustrating fact is how silent God is in the face of our pain and hurt.
There is a terrible joke about a television news team that was taping at Jerusalem ™s Wailing Wall. Every day they saw the same elderly man praying, morning, noon, and night beside that famous structure. On their last day they got curious and asked him, "What is it you pray for so fervently?"
The old man thought for a moment and said, "I pray for health, for happiness, and for peace in my land."
"I see," said the reporter. "You don ™t look that healthy. Are you happy?"
"Not really," said the man.
"And your homeland is in turmoil. Do you really believe your prayers are heard?"
The man nodded and replied, "Sometimes it ™s like talking to a wall."
Mature Christians can acknowledge that sometimes prayer is like talking to a wall. Sometimes we pray with great pain and anguish. We need an answer. We need it now. But no answer comes-at least no answer that satisfies us, and we ask, "Where is God? Does He care?"
THIS LEADS US TO A SECOND OBSERVATION. SOMETIMES THE BIGGEST BATTLE IS SIMPLY TO KEEP UP OUR FLAGGING SPIRITS. Part of the reason that Jesus praised the widow is that she did not give up.
One of the ironies of life is that our struggle with discouragement in a given situation is often a bigger battle than the struggle with the actual problem which confronts us. In other words, it is sometimes harder just "to hang in there" than it actually is to deal with the issue or conflict.
When Gen. George Washington wintered his troops at Valley Forge in 1777, the British soldiers turned out to be the least of his worries. For one thing, the Continental Congress failed to send him the food and supplies his army needed. Food was available in large supply in other areas; but transportation problems, the shaky value of Continental paper currency, and lack of total support for the Revolution by the civilian population kept the food from reaching Washington ™s army.
Of 11,000 American troops beginning that winter, about 2,500 died, more than 2,000 deserted or refused to reenlist at the end of their expired term, and about half of the remaining 6,000 men lacked sufficient shoes or clothes to be able to go out to fight. During that famous winter at Valley Forge, the real battle that the Americans fought was the inner desire to quit and go home. They did not quit, of course. That is why we have an independent republic today, but the temptation was there!
So it is in our lives. Persistence and perseverence are often our biggest challenges. And that is true of some of the greatest saints the Christian faith has produced.
The great missionary, Judson, wanted to go to India, but God sent him to Burma. His wife was ill. He prayed that she would live, but she died. Judson prayed that his children would live, but they also died, and he buried them on the mission field. Judson prayed that he would be spared prison, but he spent years in prison. Every time he prayed about something significant in his life, he seemed to be talking to a wall. Later in his life, however, he said, "God did not always answer my prayers, but he answered me. He gave me the courage, the faith and the perseverance to keep going, to keep believing and to keep working." This widow that Jesus told about did not give up. Some of us are crying out to God night and day. Often just hanging in there is our most difficult trial. But there is one more critical thing to be said.
JESUS WANTS US TO KNOW THAT GOD DOES HEAR AND HE DOES CARE. WE ARE NOT FORSAKEN. IF A CROTCHETY JUDGE WHO DOES NOT FEAR GOD NOR MAN WILL GIVE INTO A LITTLE WIDOW BECAUSE SHE IS PERSISTENT, WILL NOT A LOVING GOD HEAR THE PRAYERS OF HIS CHILDREN? That is the question Jesus is posing. He is not advising us about how to pray. He is simply saying something about the nature of God. God does hear and answer prayer.
You may be a Charles Osgood fan. Osgood, a veteran CBS reporter and commentator, on his program, the "Osgood File," told about an experiment involving prayer that was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study was done with 393 heart patients at the San Francisco General Medical Center ™s Coronary Care Unit. What they tried to test was the power of prayer! Does it do sick people any good for other people to pray for them?
Here is how the study was conducted. The patients were divided into two groups. None of the patients knew whether they were in the group being prayed for or not. This was necessary to rule out psychological factors. Patients in both groups were equally sick when they entered the hospital. But here is what occurred while they were being studied.
NONE of the patients who were prayed for needed tubes inserted for breathing or feeding. Twelve patients NOT prayed for, needed such tubes.
Two in the "prayer group" needed antibiotics while nine in the NOT PRAYED FOR group needed that intervention. Patients prayed for had fewer episodes of congestive heart failure, pneumonia and cardiac arrest than in the group not prayed for. In other words, it appears that, according to scientific observation, prayer did make a difference. Charles Osgood put it this way, "As we used to say about chicken soup: `It couldn ™t hurt. ™"
You and I would say much more. Prayer works. We know it works. Many of us have banged on God ™s door late into the night and He answered our cries.
Ricky Gray, pastor of the Cato Baptist Church of Mendenhall, Mississippi tells about a stormy night in their little town. Severe thunderstorms and possible tornados were forecast. During the night their family awoke to the sound of a rushing wind. It was a tornado! Trees began to snap. Homes and barns received heavy damage. The storm tore a wide swath of destruction in their neighborhood.
During the midst of the storm, Ricky recalls how he and his wife gathered the children to the cellar for safety. Among them was their ten-year-old son, Tim. During the frantic moments of the storm, Tim was overheard praying for their family ™s safety. He closed his prayer very emphatically, "...and Lord I hope you ™re really listening!"
Ricky, it may not seem like it at times, but you can rest assured that God really is listening. If a crotchety judge who fears neither God nor man will give in to the pleas of a persistent widow, will not a loving God heed the prayers of his people? The answer is yes, He will.
1. Clyde Beatty, FACING THE BIG CATS, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday &Company, Inc., 1984.)
2. Tim Hansel, YOU GOTTA KEEP DANCIN ™, (Elgin, Illinois: David C. Cook Publishing Co., 1985).