Praying for Marriage

“I wish I could do more than just pray,” people often say, when they hear about an issue or situation they care about. It’s something a lot of people are saying as they watch two crucial marriage cases move closer and closer to review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But, of course, there’s no such thing as “just praying.”  Prayer is, as a wise man once said, “the most we can do, not the least we can do.”

To pray is to come alongside our God and Father and seek His perspective … to see as He sees … to understand what, in a given situation, is most important to Him. It is a deeply humbling thing, for genuine prayer is at once a recognition of our own limitations, and an acknowledgement of the power, and the purity of purpose, that are God’s alone For as Dante says, “In His will is our peace.”

The marriage cases involving California’s Prop 8, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), will soon be argued at the high court. They’ll then be decided by men and women who must necessarily bring their own experience, insights, interpretations, and, yes, prejudices to the issue. The justices, each of them, are facing unimaginable pressures from those who have a deeply vested interest (political, financial, personal) in the outcome of this epic legal struggle.

But however eloquent the attorneys are, however persuasive their own clerks, however profound the insights revealed to these nine justices in public presentation or private study, their decisions (individually, and as a whole), will ultimately come from quiet corners of their soul and conscience that mere men can never reach. They will hand down their rulings this summer in knowing compliance – or defiance – of a ruling they must inevitably intuit from an even more ultimate authority.

“The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water,” Proverbs 21:1 reminds us. “He turns it wherever He wishes.” Those of us privileged to know the One who holds the hearts of judges, as well as kings, in His hand – and who know, what’s more, how important these cases are to the future of our nation and its laws – are invited to bring those two understandings together, before the throne of grace.

His is “the love which moves the sun and the other stars” (to quote another Dante phrase). And in that love, we are invited to seek His wisdom, His purpose, His salvation in this circumstance as tirelessly as Abraham (Genesis 18:16-33), as ardently as Hezekiah (2 Kings 19:14-19), and as confidently as Josiah (2 Kings 23:1-25) did in theirs. Let the record show we did so – together – and, in doing so, did the most that anyone, ever, could possibly have done to preserve God’s ideal of marriage in America … and with it, much goodness for our nation.

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COMMIT TO PRAY: Download a different prayer sheet each week leading up to arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 26th and 27th. http://alln.cc/X0kV30

Author: Alan Sears