This Sunday I am travelling over the border to Wiltshire where I will be preaching in a friend’s church in the Diocese of Salisbury. I am really looking forward to meeting the good people of St Michael’s, Colehill.

It feels only recently that our set Gospel reading was encouraging us to be nuisances when it comes to prayer, yet here we are again. Previously Jesus encouraged us to be like the man who disturbs his neighbour in the middle of the night, seeking help in providing hospitality to an unexpected guest; in this week’s passage we are presented with a widow seeking justice, a widow who will not stop pestering the judge until she receives it. I read this passage and I feel somewhat inadequate in my own prayer life, inadequate, unfaithful, and, to be honest, a bit of a flake.

Back in February I made a commitment to pray with and for the people of Ukraine. I was on holiday and read an article telling how Ukrainian Christians were meeting every morning at 7am to pray together, on their knees, in the snow! Some were travelling distances to join together, getting up as early as 5am in order to do so. I was inspired and so, I set my alarm clock for 7am so that I could slide out of bed and onto my knees in solidarity. This I did the following day despite being on holiday, and the next, and then Russia invaded Ukraine and it seemed even more important to do so.

To begin with I would wake, read the news to see what else had happened over night, and then fall to my knees. I didn’t always know how to pray, words were at a loss, however, I believed that simply being on my knees in the dark was prayer in itself.

Then came the day when the alarm didn’t go off, followed by the day I fell back to sleep. There were days when I had a cold, days when covid paid a visit, days when…. I can’t even remember, but it is now rare that I actually get out of bed, let alone onto my knees. Father forgive me.

I know that Ukrainians still need our prayers, and I do still care, my heart breaks when I see the news, so I tend not to watch it or flick to the app. I still want to pray for Ukraine, I still long for the day when Russia lays down her weapons, and Putin loses control of both annexed lands and Russia. I look forward with hope to the rebuilding of a beautiful country by her resilient people. Somehow I have failed to continue voicing this in prayer. Prayer is powerful, but I have relinquished that spiritual power each time I have felt too ‘weak’ to pray, and I feel ashamed.

The widow was persistent. She had everything to lose (or gain) depending upon whether or not the judge would uphold her complaint, whereas I have nothing to gain, nothing to lose. The invasion of Ukraine hasn’t affected me: I still have a roof over my head and an income, my family are safely tucked up at night in our own home. We are safe. Ok, so fuel and food prices are rising, in part due to this war and the side we have chosen to support from a distance, but actually much of that could be due to failings of our own politics. However my brothers and sisters in Christ are suffering and they need others to advocate on their half: here am I Lord?

Perhaps I have lost faith in prayer, lost faith in God? Things seem to be going from bad to worse, we have been bounced from the fall out of Brexit, to the pandemic, to the rise in the cost of living… Doesn’t God care? There are wars and rumours of war, wars that have gone on for so long that our news no longer reports them. People are beginning to whisper ‘end times’, and I reply that not even Jesus knows when that will be and we should live every day in the best way that we can, live every day as if we will be meeting Jesus face to face tomorrow; and yet I fail to rise from my bed and fall to my knees, because I am too tired, too weary, and perhaps a part of me thinks that it doesn’t matter, that my prayers make no difference whatsoever.

And this is where the parable is really clever: the judge is not a good man, and yet the widow remains persistent in her prayers, and finally, she is vindicated. God is not a corrupt judge, we know that he longs to hear our prayers. If the widow of the parable will be vindicated, if her pleas are heard and acted upon, then we can rest assured that ours will be too.

And so, I will return to my knees, and continue to petition God, continue to do spiritual battle on behalf of Ukraine and other nations oppressed by violence and war. I just might not do so at 7am. 7pm sounds infinitely more do-able.

You can read the story of the Persistent Widow here.

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