When soldiers go on missions, chaplains are expected to pray. The prayer I pray with men and women going “over the wire” has struck a strange cord with me. I pray, “…and Lord if we must engage the enemy… we pray for clear target, a quick response, deadly aim, and that your will be done.” Let’s just say they don’t teach this one in seminary. It has been birthed by late nights with grieving soldiers, sleepless nights when I have been one of them, and the eternal hope that we have seen the last of the tragedy.
I have concluded this prayer is profoundly Christian and that I should have started with this prayer many years ago. God has marched a myriad of people through my life in the past twenty years with one style of broken heart or another. Some have come from self inflicted injury, others because the mortar rounds have fallen like rain. All of them attacked. Regardless of their reason for coming to visit the chaplain/pastor they hold a number of things in common.
A clear target, the world seldom offers. It is so easy to be overwhelmed by the shear volume of problems. Few people bow to trouble when it comes in a single file line. However, troubles come in groups of three, as the old saying goes. It’s been my experience they come in groups of fives, tens, fifteens and twenties. Overcome by the shear volume it’s hard to isolate a target. Too often we are overrun.
Quick Response? Yeah, right! More like the numbed response of a boiling lobster. Deadly aim? You gotta be kidding! By the way, where did I put my gun? Most of us march through life beaten down by the host of problems and we do not find the strength and courage to respond quickly or do battle.
So, long after this war is over I am going to continue to pray for “a clear target, quick responses, a deadly aim, and that the Lord’s will be done.” It’s a Christian prayer. When tragedy afflicts, depression numbs, people persecute and troubles rain down the psalmist prays, “Let your hand be ready to help me..” That worked for him, “a clear shot, quick responses and a deadly aim works for me.” Don’t forget, “cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.”
