Article November 9, 1992 Issue

Disappointing the criminal intent

Prayer provides a sure and safe way to negate plans of violence.

William S. Stay

South Africa has been a huge political chessboard for a long time. Conflicting political forces are constantly devising new tactics to gain advantage. Tragically, these tactics often use men, women, and children as pawns. Such a human scenario leaves little room for hope until people find that they are not helpless pawns at all.

In the mid-seventies, during a period of great injustice and subsequent civil unrest, a mass march on downtown Johannesburg was planned by a militant political group in Soweto. All able-bodied residents were instructed to take part. Many did not want to participate but found that refusing would mean being dragged from their homes by the marchers. A very small number of those threatened were Christian Scientists.

The threat of violence was so serious that these Scientists asked fellow church members in all the provinces to pray about the situation. A verse from the Bible was very helpful at this time in thinking deeply about the nature of God. It reads, "He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise."

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