Yesterday I was talking with a friend, a black woman named Connie. She is a health-care worker, and a serious follower of Christ. She said to me, “What we really need to do is to pray. I mean, why not encourage all Christians to stop at 12-noon every day and pray for God to heal the world?”

I thought: (a) she’s right, of course, (b) she’s got a big God, (c) why not?

I told her I was in! And since we spoke, I can’t get away from the simplicity, but the gravity(!) of what she said. Not to mention sanity!

So at noon yesterday, I said my first “Connie Prayer,” and now I’m inviting you—and everybody you know—to get in on it.

Yes, of course you and I have been praying! Of course! But I promise you this: we’re not praying more than we need to! And not enough of us are! And praying in unison creates power! And will honor God!

I thought of several prayer passages in the Bible, but, strangely, this little known one jumped out above the rest: the little prophet Habakkuk (a “minor” prophet just preached shorter messages than a “major” prophet) prayed a huge prayer in 3:2:

We live in a wrath-filled world! Maybe God’s wrath, satan’s wrath, man’s wrath, political wrath, fear’s wrath, a plague’s wrath, whatever. Maybe an equal portion of many “wraths,” but nobody will deny anger permeates the world—AND MAKES HABAKKUK’S PRAYER, “IN WRATH REMEMBER MERCY” so fitting, so apt, to pertinent! So necessary!

I am inviting you to join Connie’s Prayer, and to ask every person you know to do the same. At your twelve-noon. Today. Until the wrath’s gone!

Yes, that can become a ritual if you let it. But it can also become ultimate reality if you want it to.

Bill Anderson

Grapevine, Texas