Utumishi Blog

Analysing slogans on matatus and buses is a fun pastime in traffic. This one made me think a bit more the normal. Some good and challenging stuff here:

• It’s good to pray. And good to pray each day (“daily bread”). And we’re particularly encouraged to pray “deliver us from evil.” I’m rebuked for my prayerlessness.
• There’s an important recognition here that the devil is a great enemy. He does indeed prowl around seeking to destroy. The world is not simply mechanical cause and effect. There is a spiritual battle going on.
• The way that a slogan about prayer is unashamedly pasted in big black and white letters on the front of public transport is a sharp contrast to the secularised anti-religious public space in many Western countries where no-one would dream of putting such a message on a public vehicle.
• There is an interesting juxtaposition of the slogan and the bus it is pasted on. Perhaps an intended connecting of the world of transport and commuting with the spiritual realm. Again I find this challenging and helpful. The Western worldview has little room for praying for a journey or about mechanical issues. Here is an attempt to integrate daily life and physical practicalities with the reality of an intimately involved personal God.

But on the other hand I’d like to ask the guy who pasted that slogan on the bus four questions:

1. Are you thinking of prayer as a ‘thing’ that you do? Prayer in and of itself does nothing and merits nothing. It is the person you are praying to who needs to do something. Prayer is (or should be) simply talking to a person who can do something.  Which brings us to the next question…
2. Who are you praying to? If there is no God you are wasting your time. If there is a God who is unconcerned or powerless you are wasting your time. If you are praying to a god other than the Lord and Father of Jesus Christ revealed in his Scriptures you are in great spiritual danger. And if you are praying to that Father, the follow up question might be, Why do you think he should listen to you?
3. How would you know if your prayer was answered? Or to ask this another way, What is the worst that the devil could do which causes you to pray that he is kept away? I wonder whether, behind this slogan, and perhaps implied by its placement on the front of a bus is the thought that the devil is the one who brings disaster, accident and death. So to keep the devil away is to keep disaster, accident and death away. But what if the devil’s main agenda is to deceive us, to take us away from a pure devotion to Christ, to rob us of joy in Christ (John 8:44; 2 Cor. 11:3)? Perhaps the devil would be quite happy with us having safe travel and healthy lives so long as our hearts are drawn away from Christ to love the world and the things in the world.
4. Are you in Christ? The idea of keeping the devil away implies that he is already away from us. But what if we are right now under the power of the devil? What if we are captive to him? What if he is working in us? (Eph. 2:2) In that case a prayer a day is not the answer. We need the Stronger Man to rescue us from the Strong Man. We need God to deliver us from captivity by the death and resurrection of His Son. Then, seated with Christ, secure in Him, indwelt by the Greater Spirit, we can enjoy praying to our heavenly Father, through the righteousness of the Son, in the communing power of the Spirit. And it would be good then to ask, among other things, for protection from the enemy of our souls.