The Election Prayer

Adapted from Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer,” which may be found at www.warprayer.org

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up for an election, the campaign was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the TVs were blaring, the talking heads rattling, the candidates smiling; daily the campaign volunteers had come and gone, knocking at every door; nightly they gathered in the bars and around homes and fires listening, panting, to patriot oratory with stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts; and in the churches the pastors preached devotion to party and country, and invoked the God of Good Fortune, beseeching His aid in their good cause and in their man and cajoling every listener.

The rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the campaign and the candidates, and those who sought alternatives to the two choices laid before them, and cast a doubt upon their righteousness straightway got a stern and angry warning. This was us against them; light against darkness; the salvation of the country was at stake.
 
Sunday morning came — the next Tuesday the voters would go to the polls; the church was filled; all were there — visions of gathering with their fellows, standing line, casting the ballot, watching the polls and the returns in the evening, convinced of the righteousness of their cause! Let no one speak of his personal vices, his towering ego, his moral failings; his lies about his record or his incoherence; his many broken promises or the untrustworthy reversals in recent months.
 
For the service proceeded; a chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out a tremendous invocation:

God the all-knowing and providential! Thou who ordainest, 
In thy wisdom those who rule and are ruled!
For He chooses the instruments for His work, imperfect though they be.

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and providential Father of us all would watch over our election and our voters, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, guide them in their knowledge to vote for a candidate who would protect their morals, which he never practiced; and select the right justices, that he had never known before; and enact upright laws that he himself had circumvented; and be led in this divinely ordained work strongly and confidently, he who would let his vanity destroy the country in its rage; to crush his godless foe, and grant to them and to their party and country quadrennial honor and glory —

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our people, grant us the victory, O Lord and God, Father and Protector of our land and liberty!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think. “God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, and the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain on your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse on some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard the words ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“Lord our Father, we, your good and faithful and blessed people, ordained and chosen by you before all time, go forth to the polls this coming day — be Thou near us! O Lord our God, help us to forget that this man we elect to carry out Your will is an adulterer twice-over; that he was accused of rape by one ex-wife; that lies flow forth from his mouth like a babbling brook streams through a meadow after rain; that in his vanity and rage he would destroy the law; that he seeks to turn away the poor huddled masses yearning to be free; that he has given nothing in service or in money to this nation; that he petulantly insults those who dare speak against him; that he belittles the poor, has given nothing to the needy, that he steals from his charity in one hand to give ill-begotten funds with the other; that he praises tyrants; that he flatters himself such that he is blind to all his faults, and seeks not even Your forgiveness, O Lord; that he desires to set aside and ignore those seeking asylum from the ills and the wars we ourselves helped to cause, those unoffending widows and widowers who are roofless with unavailing grief their little children, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, lift up this cheat, this bigot, this philanderer, this demagogue, this narcissist, this man bereft of principles and morals, this destroyer, this our last hope to preserve this country in Your hallowed name!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”

. . . . .

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.