Taking Time to Pray

Taking Time to Pray Eduardo Sierra was on a business trip to Stockholm. He had no way of knowing how the trip would change his life.

Eduardo found himself with a free afternoon, so he decided to take in some sights. On his afternoon of sightseeing he stopped by one of the Catholic churches. He wanted to look at some of the magnificent decor and per­haps take a few pictures to take back home with him.

As he stepped into the church he realized something was wrong. There in the massive church was a casket placed at the altar. It appeared to be set up for a funeral, but there was no one else anywhere to be found in the building. After a few moments of standing near the back, not quite sure what he should do, he decided to go ahead and look around. As he studied the building, he had a hard time not feeling uncom­fortable with the open casket there at the front of the church.

Although he'd never really been one to attend funerals, he decided to walk by the casket and pay his respects. He did, and inside he saw an elderly gentleman. Still thinking it was odd that there was no one else in the church, he decided to pray for the man's family, friends, and whoever the man had touched in his lifetime. He offered a prayer, hoping the man knew Jesus during his life and now was home in heaven. After a few minutes he decided/to leave. He had spent close to 20 minutes there visiting the church, and he knew he hada appointments that evening and it was tie to move on.

On his way out the doors of the church, Sierra noticed there was a condolence book with a note written and attached. The note read, "If you have taken the time to pay your respects and pray. . .please sign this book." The 35-year-old man decided to sign his name in the book, since he had indeed done that very thing. Once again, it struck him as odd that there had been no one else there as he noticed he was the only one to sign the book. Little did he know he would be the only one.

Several weeks later, he got a telephone call inform­ing him that he was a millionaire. The deceased, Jens Svenson, was the man he had taken the time to pray for. Jens had been a 73-year-old real estate deal­er with no close relatives. He had specified in his will, "Whoever takes the time to pray for me and pay their respects gets all my belongings." In the case of Eduardo Sierra it had been a million-dollar prayer.

There are a lot of reasons that we should pray. The truth of the matter is that most of those prayers don't result in a million-dollar pay-off. But when you take the time to consider how much we are blessed as we pray, the rewards are even greater than the ones that Sierra discovered that day.