Learning to pray from a tweet

Simon Cooper
November 30, 2011

He is waiting to respond

I got a tweet asking me to pray for a baby boy somewhere in the East of Europe who had just been born and had a weak heart. His name was Bogdan. I don't know him, or his parents or the person who tweeted me, so I wondered how I could pray, and how to connect….

But I said a pray and tweeted back saying let me know how he is doing. That was an important decision to ask for an update on his progress because otherwise how much did I really care, and how would I remember or be spurred to pray again.

I got a tweet this morning, saying that his lungs are being artificially ventilated so that the brain can get enough oxygen, and the hope is that his heart will gain strength. So, I said another prayer and I learnt something.

Firstly, I understood that for God, it is not really a logistical problem to come and help one little baby boy amongst millions of other babies and billions of other people. Those things are not what prevents him from intervening. But I understood how it is more to do with whether or not our prayers are genuine.

Like the host in Jesus' story who will not stop banging on his neighbour's door in the middle of the night for bread until he gets the response he needs, we are being taught how God will listen if we are relentless and intentional in what we seek.

So in my prayer I could say to God that he is able to make our spiritual hearts stronger when we entreat him, and so perhaps He could help the situation of this little boy whose mother had had many miscarriages and finally given birth to a child. This boy could be a sign to us of how God's spirit can strengthen our hearts…. Now I was getting somewhere. We were having a conversation.

I found myself speaking for a little boy who I knew very little of, who I had never met, but because his life was part of something bigger, part of God's big picture, it inevitable became connected to the issues that lay with in my heart.

Most of us are often not so deeply and emotionally involved in other people's lives, let alone those who have never crossed our path. But, when we pray, God has a way of helping us to care, and guides us to connect in a special way.

You will probably not know baby Bogdan either. But if you feel moved to pray please offer a prayer of faith for his heart and maybe find yours getting stronger at the same time.