Prayer’s Deepest Level

The Word of God is a deep, deep mine. The jewels that can be extracted from its inner shafts are beyond description. While away for a little R&R, I was able to enter into a rare experience for me where I could search swim in the refreshing waters of God’s Word without the turbulence of stress and pressure.

I picked up the Scriptures one morning and prepared to read a devotion to my wife from the book of Zephaniah. I chose this remote prophet because I felt sorry for him. Nobody ever reads Zephaniah. He just sits there quietly in the obscure, dusty pages of the Old Testament’s minor prophets. After apologizing for allowing so much time to elapse between now and the last time I visited Zephaniah, I began to read. Suddenly, the old prophet placed a singing bird in my window, as I meditated on his words in the fourteenth verse of the second chapter.

Now, the chapter is about the coming desolation in Nineveh. In the eleventh verse, we are told that God is going to “starve all the gods of the earth.” Can you imagine what it will be like on the earth when God shuts down all purpose, meaning and pleasure, when suddenly no one will have anything to live for? The devastation will be stunning. In that setting, the prophet places a singing bird in the window. Now, birds do not sing when under stress. Birds do not sing in the window when trouble is brewing. Birds sing in the window at the dawn of a new day. When birds sing in the window, all is calm and peaceful.

This phrase in Zephaniah is followed by the expression: “Desolation will be on the threshold.” Birds don’t sing in the window when desolation is on the threshold, unless there is assurance that everything is going to be all right. Then, the prophet whispered in my ear: “A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not approach you” (Ps.91:7). That is when I realized that there is always a singing bird in my window. I must train my ear to hear his song!

I thanked the old prophet for the visit we had together and moved on to more familiar ground in the New Testament. Suddenly and unexpectedly, I was dropped into a garden where I could hear crying. It was dark and rather difficult to see; but I soon began to realize that this was no ordinary garden. This was Gethsemane; I was listening to God talk to Himself. The Incarnate One was speaking out of His human desperation to the One on the throne.

This was indeed holy ground. I took off my shoes and listened. It was very quiet; there were no sounds, except for the sobbing of a Human, which could be heard. There were no birds singing. It was the darkest of nights. What I heard there is what I shall share with you today. It was prayer at its deepest level.