Nowhere to go, trapped between the Nazi army and the English Channel – what can you do? This is the situation in which over 300 thousand British and French soldiers found themselves in May of 1940. The Nazis had overwhelmed Europe, taking whatever they wanted – Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, and now France. Retreating Allied forces, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, were now stuck on the beaches of the small French town of Dunkirk. Winston Churchill, who had just become Britain’s newest Prime Minister, called it a “colossal military disaster”. He was ready for the worst, expecting and hoping for maybe 20,000 men to be rescued.
King George VI did the only thing he really could do – called for a national day of prayer – asking for a true miracle. “Let us with one heart and soul, humbly but confidently, commit our cause to God and ask his aid, that we may valiantly defend the right as it is given to us to see it,” he said to his people. So they prayed.
Jesus, amongst many other worthy titles, was a praying man. Over and over we see him retreat to a solitary place and commune with his Father. When he was grieved, he prayed. When he was tired, he prayed. When he was seeing extreme success in his ministry, he prayed. When he was suffering beyond our imaginations, he prayed. He didn’t just practice it, though. He also preached it.
To his disciples in Mark 11, Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us a model to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, and follows it up in Matthew 7 by saying, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you,” as he taught about talking to and asking things of our Father. Perhaps, like me, you have read those verses many times and have never quite taken them as seriously as Jesus meant them. Whatever I ask? Really? All I have to do is ask? There is some nuance, sure, about our heart’s desire when we do the asking, but I don’t think that is what I get caught up on. Sometimes, oftentimes, it’s that I just don’t really believe that it could happen.
I know God can do anything, especially through prayer. We see people pray in the Bible and prison walls are torn down, weather patterns completely change, people are saved, and babies are born from wombs that were barren. God responded to the faithful cries of his people and moved like only He can. So if it isn’t for lack of evidence that I struggle to believe – what is it?
In part, it is that I’ve lost my imagination for what God can really do. My western, rational, evidence-based mind has seen God do amazing things – but I normalize them or explain them away, thereby limiting Him on what He might do the next time. But what if Jesus really meant what He said – word for word? What if James was spot on in James 5 when he said that, “the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective,” to heal and forgive and change things.
In the days after King George VI’s call to prayer, the following happened: a massive armada of civilian boats, nearly 900, began crossing the English channel to rescue troops; unseasonal and uncharacteristic storms blew in over the European mainland that made it almost impossible for German planes to fly and bomb the boats and soldier-filled-beaches; Hitler himself, incomprehensibly, halted his ground forces for no apparent reason – they just stopped and waited, giving the Allied forces more time to establish a greater defense and evacuate more troops; a unique calm developed in the English channel for the small, civilian craft, now heavy-laden with soldiers, to easier cross back to England. When the weather normalized and Hitler gave his command to commence, “more than 338,000 men had been rescued, ten times the expected number, including 140,000 French, Belgian, Dutch, and Polish soldiers.” A failure had turned to a “miracle of deliverance”.
You could say it was lucky or convenient. Or you could look at the prayers of millions, and their subsequent power, and allow yourself to imagine that just maybe God is that powerful. Whatever it is that you are holding this Christmas season – burdens that feel impossibly heavy and inevitable, relationships you have given up on ever being healed, changes that you keep asking for with no fruit – don’t stop praying. Ask God to renew your sanctified imagination and make room for believing that He could not only answer your prayer but exceed what you desire. It is through our unceasing prayer that something as impossible as escaping the inescapable becomes not just possible but probable. Thanks be to God.
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