PRAYERS OF THE MOMENT
Then I prayed to the God of heaven.
Nehemiah 2:4
For four months Nehemiah had prayed about the ruined walls of Jerusalem. Day and night Jerusalem seemed written on his heart, painted on his eyeballs. With one single passion absorbing Nehemiah’s soul, God sent Nehemiah an opportunity. King Artaxerxes’ question of what Nehemiah wishes to do for Jerusalem is followed by an immediate prayer for help.
This was not the prayer that stands knocking at mercy’s door, but it was the concentration of many knocks in one. It was introduced between the king’s question and Nehemiah’s answer. Probably the interval was not long enough to be noticed, but it was long enough for God to notice it—long enough for Nehemiah to have sought and obtained guidance from God as to how to answer the king. Nehemiah, being “very much afraid” at the moment, offered his prayer like an electric flash, like the winking of an eye. It was done intuitively, yet done it was, and it proved to be a prayer that prevailed with God.
We know that it was a silent prayer. Artaxerxes never knew that Nehemiah prayed, though he stood probably within a yard of him. In the innermost shrine of the temple—in the holy of holies of his own secret soul—there did he pray. Short and silent was the prayer. It was a prayer on the spot. He did not go into his chamber as Daniel did and open a window. Daniel was right, but this was a different occasion. He did not even turn his face to the wall. No, but there and then, with the king’s cup in his hand, he prayed to the God of heaven, and then answered the king’s question. And his prayer was very intense and very direct. “The God of heaven” was Nehemiah’s favorite name for God. He knew whom he was praying to. He did not draw a bow and shoot his prayer in any direction, but he prayed straight to God for the thing he wanted.
Never underestimate the value of a prayer of the moment. Nehemiah’s prayer—a little bit of a prayer pushed in sideways between a question and an answer, a mere fragment of devotion—was never erased from these words of biblical history.
God of heaven, thank You that no prayer is too brief or insignificant to escape Your attentive ears. Amen.
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