Prayer as a means of change - A sermon for the ninth Sunday after Pentecost

A boy in a small village for some reason best known to himself took to attending the weekly Prayer Meeting at the local Methodist church. Each week, the regulars would welcome him warmly when he arrived, always a few minutes late. Each week, he would listen to the prayers but never contribute himself. That is until a few weeks before Christmas when to everyone’s amazement he prayed out loud;

“Dear God, please give me a bike for Christmas so that I can get things from the shops for Mum.”

And week after week, he repeated that same prayer.

Now Christmas was drawing close and the faithful men and women at the prayer meeting began to get concerned. What would be the affect on the boy’s faith if at Christmas, there was no bike. So they got together and each of them put some money into a jar. To their joy, they found that the money they had given would go half way towards the boy getting the type of bike that he had told them he wanted. So they put the money in an envelope and delivered it to the boy’s home just a week before Christmas.

Christmas came and went. The New Year arrived and at the first gathering of the Prayer Meeting in the New Year, the people wondered what the boy’s response would be. Sure enough, the boy arrived a few minutes into the meeting and in no time they got their answer as he prayed;

“Dear God, thank you for giving the money for me to have a new bike. Only, next time, please don’t give it to the Methodists as they nicked half of it.”

What do we expect from prayer.

CONTINUED