Never Give Up: I need your voice

One of my favorite thinkers, Cornel West, was speaking and a phrase stuck out to me: "I need your voice." Sometimes, as a pastor and a frequent public speaker, I treat the space I inhabit as though it were in need of more of my voice. It is one thing to walk into a situation and believe that my voice is the one that will bring healing, it is another to walk into a situation and believe healing will occur when I can hear your voice.

The truth is, we need each others' voices. One thing that strikes me about Luke 18 is that the widow's voice goes so unheard until the twist ending to the parable. She is on the margins of her society, and her pleas have fallen on deaf ears. She is unheard in a community that is supposed to be oriented toward helping the powerless (Exodus 22:22). Yet, the judge hears her because of her incessant begging.

The parable is one of prayer. If an unjust judge would hear a powerless widow, whose only strength is her persistence and voice, then won't God hear us in our prayers? But we can't pray alone. We need each others' voices. We need voices that will pray when we lack the words, when we lack the ideas, when we lack the faith. We need people to pray for us, not just in the simple platitudes of "I'll pray for you," but in the real moments of our brokenness when we tremble to lift a single word.

I need your voice. We all do. There is no way we can go about the work of God without needing the prayers of one another. Sometime in churches we give out the message (intentionally or otherwise) that there are two kinds of people: people who do God's work and people who pray for people who do God's work. This is not the case. We are all called to be both kinds of people. How could we pray for God's work without wanting to get involved? How could we be involved and never pray? Indeed, prayer calls us to action; action calls us to prayer. And we need to do both together.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. May it be a time of togetherness for you.