Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21 (NIV)
The Power Already at Work
Saturday morning he is down on one knee at the back fence, putting back what the winter pulled loose. It’s the bad knee, and getting up off it takes him longer every year. The field behind the fence has been empty since the farm sold. He keeps the line tight because his father did, and because it is two hours of not sitting down, and while he works he asks God the same thing about his daughter he asked last Saturday.
Paul is praying for a church, and he prays that they will be rooted and established in love and have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. Paul then blesses the God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.
God’s power is at work in him out there at the fence, and God is not held to the place where that power started.
A request you have made every week for years is still a request, and I have never managed to think of it as anything worse than that.
He’ll tell you the asking has changed shape. He used to pray for her to come to her senses. Now he prays for her and stays down on the knee a minute longer, wanting her well more than he wants to be right about her. He noticed it in March, in the middle of a sentence, and it had clearly been true a while before that. Paul says the power is at work within us, and on him it came out as a change in what he wants.
Paul turns it all toward glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Tomorrow he will be three rows from the back, between the woman who runs the nursery and a man who is asleep before the second song, and all three of them will say amen at the end of the same sentence.
A Prayer to Remember
Lord, we’re asking again for people who have not moved an inch, and we haven’t got a new way to say it. Do more than anybody praying it knows how to ask for. When it comes, let it come to more than us. We’re still on the same request, and we’re not in a hurry to be done with it.
In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
