In her book, “The season Starts Tomorrow,” Katie McCabe tells the story of how Coach Walt Kennedy took the boys’ basketball team at St. Jude High School in Montgomery, Alabama from obscurity to the state finals.  Though confined to a wheelchair by multiple sclerosis, Kennedy proved to be a much tougher coach than the boys had ever known.  He disciplined them ruthlessly.  While other teams played the less demanding zone defense, he insisted that his boys play their defense man-to-man.  The boys learned to stand their ground and pound their opposition until it crumbled.

It occurs to me that we can pray the same way.  As Christians, we use zone defense against evil when we pray together for world peace or an end to poverty.  Group prayers offered for large evils are fine; but, when it is our own child who is injured or a friend who has cancer, the struggle gets personal.  I want to know that people of faith are lifting the name of my loved one to heaven’s gate, dealing one-on-one with the hard thing that has come into our lives.  When the adversary appears overwhelming, these are the prayers we count on to win our battles and nourish us in our pain.

I often think of my mother as one of the mightiest prayer warriors I have ever known.  For more than twenty years she prayed daily that faith might sprout in my father’s heart.  Who can stand against such prayer?  After twenty years, the wall around his heart crumbled.

One night I sat with Grandma at her kitchen table while she finished her evening cup of liquid supplement.  She paused and said forlornly, “I feel so useless.”  Frail of body, dull of hearing, afflicted by dim eyesight and arthritic hands, she was unable to do most of the things she once enjoyed.  “Are you still praying for us?”  I asked, shouting a little so she could hear.  She smiled broadly and nodded.   “Then you are far from useless.”  She stood up and her gnome-like, ninety pound body hunched over.  If the prayer warrior within her were made visible, she would rise head and shoulders above mighty athletes.  When times get really tough, instead of a less experienced zone team, I will take one praying grandma any day.