Once in awhile I hear someone talk about "praying for this economy" and I wonder how that looks in practice. After all, I believe that our prayers should be specific, so our prayers may take on a form that matches what we think needs to be done, specifically. Some people may pray for the government to please pass a trillion dollar jobs bill to hire all the jobless. Someone else may pray that the government simply print up enough money and distribute it to make us all millionaires so we can retire and stop worrying. And someone else may pray that we all just concentrate on our own austerity and quit buying stuff we don't need.
Each of the above solutions carries with it its own unintended consequences. Not only that, but it's pretty hard to find someone to pray the prayer of agreement with you in today's political climate. The fact is that our economy is unbelievably complex, largely because we are a free people acting independently. We all affect the economy in miniscule ways. Acting together, those ways are magnified, such as the way so many Americans have gone deep into debt that presumed upon real estate values that would increase forever. Many of us borrowed against those phantom values, and no election can change that.
For many of us, what is in order is a prayer of repentance, followed by consecrating ourselves to obedience in the future. Many people are praying right now, and we must all do our part in miniscule ways to improve the situation. And we must trust God to get us to do so together.
Today, there is no church sponsoring 24/7 prayer. If we had fewer unsponsored days, I think things would get better.
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