“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments.” 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 NLT
When hubby and I travel, we avoid chain restaurants. A small-town diner got several good reviews and had lots of cars in the lot, so we stopped. The food turned out to be decent, but the floor show was another matter.
After we were seated, a petite young woman with cerebral palsy struggled awkwardly on her hand canes to reach her seat near our table. Her companion, a man easily five times her size, cursed her out for how long she’d taken in the bathroom. His voice carried throughout our end of the restaurant. The woman argued back, but her halting speech and child-like answers indicated some degree of cognitive impairment.
He told her she could just walk home (in ninety-degree heat) or “go back to mommy and daddy.” Oddly, no one else in the diner reacted, not even the waitress. Perhaps they knew them, or sadder yet, this wasn’t unusual for the area. I determined if he made a threat to harm her, I would call the police.
Physicians are trained to look for signs of vulnerable women and domestic abuse. I’d treated many abused patients in my family practice. But this man’s verbal abuse was the worst I’d ever heard. He even made fun of her disability. If this was in public, how did he treat her at home?
If I tried to intervene, it would likely make things worse, but I’d had enough.
I normally don’t make a show of praying in public settings, but this time I put my hands together, bowed my head and prayed silently. I asked that the demons of anger and hatred surrounding this couple would be banished, and the man would stop his tirade. I prayed they both would find Jesus.
The argument lulled.
I stopped praying and studied my menu. The bully started cursing again. By now, she was crying, and he mocked her tears. I made a deliberate show of setting down my menu and prayed again. My husband gave me a puzzled glance but said nothing. He told me in the car he knew I had to have a good reason for what I was doing, being this obvious.
Three more rounds of argument ensued, followed by prayer each time. The last time, when I opened my eyes, the man looked at me with shame on his face before returning to eating. The argument stopped.
We finished our meal and left. I prayed for this couple all the hundreds of miles home. Hopefully what the man saw would impact him and be used by God even more than if I had actually spoken. Proverbs 15:1 says, “A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.” NLT
I think soft prayers can do the same.