Unheard Prayer

John MacVane was a reporter for the National Broadcasting Company during World War II, and his broadcasts from the battle-front kept Americans riveted to their radios.

One day in November 1942, while he was in North Africa, he was told to prepare the Army Hour broadcast from Algiers for the following Sunday.  It was a tremendous undertaking.  MacVane had to interview leaders, obtain messages from chief commanders, write scripts, and then have them approved by war censors.  Then there was the music.  MacVane found some American GIs who could play jazz, and he started them practicing.

Finally the night of the broadcast came, and a cast of fifty assembled in a makeshift studio, all of them excited about beaming a wartime broadcast to the people of America.  Precisely at 8:30pm, the orchestra began playing.  MacVane leaned into the microphone and said in his most sober voice, “This is Algiers, the heart of Africa.”

During interviews with MacVane, soldiers and pilots for the RAF and the US Air Force told their dramatic stories.  The show ended with the band playing America’s national anthem.  It was a great program, and afterward all the participants were ecstatic.  They had just given a riveting account from the warfront—and it had been heard live by forty million people back home.

Several days later, however, MacVane received a telegram asking what had happened to the expected broadcast.  Nobody at home heard so much as a single word.  MacVane’s program had disappeared into thin air.

Let me ask you a question: Can the same thing happen to prayer?

David Jeremiah, Signs of Life, p. 89