This is a line from Frank Laubach in his book: Prayer the Mightiest Force in the Word: Thoughts for an Atomic Age. The book truly is written for his time. The world was still reeling from the throes of war. He writes:
Prayer is likely to under valued by all but wise people because it is so silent and so secret. We are often deceived into thinking that noise is more important than silence. War sounds far more important than the noiseless growing of a crop of wheat, yet the silent wheat feeds millions, while war destroys them. Nobody but God knows how often prayers have changed the course of history. Many a man who prayed received no credit excepting in heaven. We are tempted to turn from prayer to something more noisy like speeches or guns, because our motives are mixed. We are interested in the making of a better world of course, but we also want people to give us credit fro what we have done.
Frank C. Laubach, Prayer — the Mightiest Force in the Word: Thoughts for an Atomic Age
Secret prayer for others all during the day is an acid test of our unselfishness. Our little selves must fade out, leavening a self-forgetting channel, through which God’s warmth flows unhindered in lovely unending prayer. The highest form of communion is not asking God for things for ourselves, but letting Him flow down through us, our out over the world–in endless benediction. In the old Hebrew story Sodom needed ten good men to be saved. Now the world needs ten million. Anybody Christian enough to have read this far must be on that ten million or there will not be enough to save our age.
Let’s pray. For many of us, more secret prayer is what our social-distancing and staying home is making possible.