John Amos Comenius (1592-1670)MUSTARD SEED PRAYING
Matthew 17:20
JESUS SAID the kingdom of God starts small but grows large, quietly and mysteriously, like a tiny seed planted in the soil (Mark 4:1-20:26-32). It should not surprise us, therefore, that God’s answer to prayer often come in the same way. We pray and we wait. We wonder, Did he hear, does he care, has he refused?
In
the 1620s, John Amos Comenius and a rag tag bunch of his church member knelt in
the snow at the Polish border and prayed a wistful but bold mustard seed prayer.
Caught in the turmoil of Catholic-Protestant rivalry in The Thirty Years War,
they had been forced to leave their beloved Bohemia. As they knelt shivering,
they looked back longingly at their homeland, as Comenius asked God to preserve
in Bohemia "a hidden seed to glorify
thy name." But Comenius never saw his prayer answered. In 1670 he died
an expatriate penniless and homeless man. He did, however, leave the world 154
books that were seminal in the formation of modern ideas about Christian
education.
Comenius’s prayer wasn’t answered until 100 years
later when a young Count Zinzendorf opened his family estate in Moravia as a
refuge for the followers of Comenius. They called their community the Herrnhut,
or "Lord’s Watch." Since they themselves were the fruit of
mustard seed praying, they took their name from Isaiah 62:6-7, a great text on
mustard seed prayer.
"I have posted
watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night.
You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he
establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth."
The Moravian Brethren, as they came to be known, were
the pioneers of modern missions. In the
first 100 years of their existence, they maintained a continuous 24 hours, 7
day a week prayer vigil, and sent 2000 missionaries to the ends of the earth.
It was at a Moravian prayer meeting in London that John Wesley felt his heart "strangely warmed." From that encounter
came the world-shaking Wesleyan revival, the impact of which we feel to this
day.
Comenius prayed for God to preserve in Bohemia "a hidden seed to glorify thy name."
From a human perspective, it may have seemed that God did nothing for a
century. But for the next two and a half centuries he went far beyond Bohemia
to the world!
GOD’S WAYS are not our ways. His timing is not
our timing. Where are you in your prayers now? Kneeling with Comenius in the
snow? Wondering with Comenius at the end of his life?
Read and
reflect on the seed parable of Mark 4.
Ask the Holy
Spirit to strengthen your praying with mustard seed hope.
Playwright Janet Irene Thomas
Founder/CEO
Bible Stories Theatre of
Fine & Performing Arts
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