Praying for Strangers

There are so many ways a book like this could go wrong. It could be super-saccharine. It could be self-righteous, or narcissistic, or overly introspective. It could be pushy. But in telling the story of a year in her life — the year her two sons were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and she made a New Year’s resolution to pray for a stranger every day — author River Jordan walks the path of authenticity, earns my liking and my trust, and inspires me.

Praying for Strangers introduces us to the people Ms. Jordan met in the course of her journey, giving us a glimpse of their stories and describing their reactions when she let them know she was praying for them. More than a call to prayer, she felt also a call to boldness in letting each day’s stranger know that they stood out to her in some way and she would be thinking of them and praying for them. Their reactions were almost always positive. With respect for them, Ms. Jordan shares some of their struggles and reflects on the ways her experience of meeting and praying for each one challenges and humbles her.

Occasionally as I go about my business, a face stands out to me and I pray for the person — the beleaguered mother with the cart full of children in the checkout, the grim-faced librarian coughing into her sleeve, the person lost in thought and sipping tea by the window at Barnes & Noble. But to approach them and introduce myself and tell them? To ask their name and whether there’s anything I can be praying for? That would be new territory, to say the least.

It was new territory for River Jordan, too. I found myself relating to some of the people she prayed for. But most of all I found myself relating to her. She is no more a spiritual superhero than I am, and she is not a natural extrovert either. Yet she manages to step out of herself into a new kind of compassion, and the experience yields rich insights into herself, humanity, and prayer in general. Prayer, she muses at one point, “is perhaps one of the greatest human connectors in this world. A chain that runs from one carbon life-form to another, an unseen force that makes a strong vertical leap into the mysteries of the unknown. The place where they might be captured, opened, and answered.”

If I have any reservation at all about the book, it’s that at times, Ms. Jordan’s tone can take on a bit of a New-Age, humanistic tone. There is no attempt to anchor her comments on prayer to a biblical context. But this didn’t lessen the book’s power for me. I feel a little bit like I do when I read Frederick Buechner: “Is this author believing something different than I do, or just shunning the usual language and cliches? Is he tentative because he’s on the fence, or is he just more careful with his semantics than others?” Ultimately, I guess it’s obvious that I concluded we’re on the same page in the substance of our faith. Some of the tentativeness I sensed actually makes the important point that you don’t have to have to be SuperChristian, you don’t have to have all the answers, in order to step out of your comfort zone and care about others.

All of us meet people in need, all of us want to help, but we don’t have great human or material resources at our beck and call. This book reminds us of what we can do for one another by appealing to the good and generous Father of Lights. Reading it has been an encouragement to me, and I’ve found myself looking harder at the people I meet. I’m grateful to Sherry for bringing it to my attention back in April.

There is a book trailer featuring River Jordan talking about Praying for Strangers here.