Of all the mind-stretching Old Testament stories in the Egermeier’s illustrated Bible story book that played a formative role in my childhood, few captured my imagination more than the story of Joshua praying that God would stop the sun’s movement long enough for him to defeat the armies of the Amorites (Joshua 10:12-13). 

Quite apart from the mysteries of holy violence that would soon pre­occupy my young mind, the first and most urgent question for me was what it meant for humans to ask God to alter the natural order of things. 

If Joshua could command the sun to stand still, could I ask God to prevent a thunderstorm from disrupting a Little League baseball game? Could I ask God to affect the outcome of that game? Could God make time go backward so that I could undo an embarrassing gaffe?

Initially, I assumed the answer was obvious, especially when I heard people in church quote the words of Jesus, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13), or confidently declare that “the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (James 5:16).

But it didn’t take long before I could sense that there was something fundamentally illogical about such prayers. After all, what if a pious farmer next door was praying for rain? What if righteous people on the opposing team were praying for their own side to win? Was God really prepared to disrupt the laws of nature in response to my whims? Did God have a stake in the outcome of my personal desires? 

Now, more than 50 years later, I have to confess that a part of me is still uncertain about how prayer works, especially prayers of petition. Yet, as I have spent a growing amount of time with Christians in other cultural settings — settings where prayer is absolutely central to their experience as believers — much of my skepticism has evaporated.   

For nearly 10 years, Mennonite World Conference has organized a global online prayer hour. Every two months on Fridays at 14:00 (UTC) — morning in the Americas, late afternoon in Europe and Africa, evening in Asia — Anabaptist-Mennonites from around the world join online to share concerns and joys from their region and to pray for each other. 

The time together usually begins with a gathering of prayer requests from a specific region in the world. Then the group shifts to language-­specific breakout rooms where MWC regional representatives and members of the deacon’s commission lead prayer in English, French, Spanish and Hindi. 

As I have participated in the MWC prayer hour, I’ve come to appreciate more fully several dimensions of prayer that other Christians have recognized for millennia. 

First, structured prayer with others reminds us that the ordinary world is infused with God’s presence. Many Muslims pause five times a day to acknowledge God as the creator and sustainer of the world. Imagine how you would think about the routine flow of your life differently if you stopped five times each day to attend carefully to the breath of God, always present but usually drowned out by the urgency of our daily tasks. 

Second, the MWC online prayer hour is a wonderful way of sharing information about things that matter to us. To be sure, sharing time in our worship services can sometimes become an awkward ritual. But having structured opportunities to share deeply from our lives — joys, needs, laments, fears — makes me feel connected with other brothers and sisters who I otherwise would never meet.

In a closely related sense, the MWC online prayer hour reminds me that the Spirit is at work in remarkable ways in settings far from my own. Praying together in various languages makes visible the fact that God’s reign extends around the world — a helpful reminder that the world God sees is almost certainly not divided along the political or national boundaries that play such a huge role in our perception of what matters. 

Finally, the MWC online prayer hour occasionally takes me back to the stories of the Bible where the fervent prayers of God’s people seem to indeed result in outcomes that can only be described as miraculous. Testimonies of freedom from demonic spirits, healings that defy medical explanation, an end to cycles of revenge killings, of crooked lives made straight, push me to the limits of my rational arguments — and sometimes beyond.

The ways of God can indeed be mysterious. But don’t let the mystery of prayer keep you from pausing on a regular basis to recognize that you are not alone in the universe, that the family of God is bigger than political boundaries and that the world is shimmering with possibilities that sometimes stretch beyond reason and logic.