Read: Revelation 8:1-5

The prayers of the saints . . . rose . . . and there were peals of thunder. (vv. 4-5)

Eugene Peterson borrowed the words “reversed thunder” for the title of his book about the Revelation of St. John. He took it that in coining this phrase, George Herbert must have had in mind the beginning of Revelation 8, where John is about to first hear the seven trumpets of warning sounded and then see the seven bowls of punishment poured out. The agonized pleas with which the saints have besieged God cannot but bring results; sooner or later their thunderous assault on the gates of heaven is assuredly going to bring a thunderous response. As John puts it, when from the angel’s censer the prayers of the church rise up to the throne of God, hot with indignation at the evils sin has wrought, from the same censer his answering anger will be hurled down upon the wicked world that has fostered them.

In fact it would be wickedly wrong for the church not to pray fervently against such evils. Because for all our efforts to confront these things directly, it’s the words we address to God that bounce back with supernatural force, so that the world will not be able to help hearing them. Praying against evil is like the “slingshot effect” of sending a space probe past one of the outer planets so as to give it the terrific extra impetus by which it will reach its target.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

Prayer (I)

BY GEORGE HERBERT

Prayer the Church’s banquet, Angels’ age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tower,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days-world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood.

The land of spices; something understood.

Prayer:

Father, may your will be done, because mine is simply not up to the job.

 

Author: Michael Wilcock

 

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