His Mother’s Prayer

Arthur raised his arm slowly in order not to frighten the birds roosting on the branch far above his head. Then he slid a stone into the leather band of his slingshot, pulled back the rubber band and released the stone. It flew through the branches and straight for the cluster of birds. There was a dull thud as one landed a short distance away. One was not enough. Silently Arthur slid among the undergrowth, taking care not to stand on any brittle twigs that might break and give him away. There were other birds and he decided to try to hit another one. From his leather pouch he took a little pile of stones, looking for two that would fit together in his slingshot. They needed to be rounded on one side but flat on the other, and about the same size and weight. “Perfect!” he whispered. “These ones are ideal.” Again there was absolute silence until he released the stones. This time it was followed by two dull thuds.

Arthur unwound a length of a thin vine from the tree the birds had been on, broke it off, and used it to tie together the legs of his three birds. He wanted the birds as trophies.

“It’s me, Mother!” Arthur called as he neared home. There was silence. Dropping his birds on the floor, he went in quietly. It took a minute for his eyes to get used to the darkness after being out in the brilliant African sun. Seeing his mother on her knees didn’t take him by surprise. Monica was a Christian, and when she wasn’t doing all the work she was on her knees praying. Arthur listened.

‘Lord, please forgive my child of his sins. And also help him to have more respect for the creatures you created. Please save his soul and use him to tell others about yourself,” she said.

“She’s praying for me again as usual,” he thought, creeping back out into the sunlight. He wasn’t so proud of his birds any more. “Maybe I’ll become a Christian one day, but I’m too busy enjoying myself to be bothered just now. I wish Mother would stop asking God to convert me until I’m grown up. It would be so easy to become a believer just to please her, but I want to please myself while I’m young.”

“I had a visit from the police today, son,” Monica told her young son, when she joined him outside. “There’s been trouble and they wondered if you were involved.” Arthur looked at her. “What am I meant to have done?” he asked, laughing just a little nervously. “Because I didn’t do it and I wasn’t there when I did it.” His mother looked serious. “Arthur,” she said, “I know you weren’t involved because you were with me when the theft took place. But I also know that you don’t always keep good company and you do get into scrapes.”

Arthur hung his head, but just for a minute.
“I’m young, Mother,” he said. “I’ll not do anything so stupid that the police will come for me. And I promise I will think about becoming a Christian… sometime.” “Sometime may not be soon enough,” his mother warned. “Not everyone lives to grow up.”

A shiver went down the young boy’s spine. “But I will,” he said, defiantly. A few months later, Arthur was whining about not feeling so well. “What’s wrong?” his mother asked. “Are you feeling sick?”

Before he could reply, he was caught in a spasm of pain. He was bent over double with the force of it, and it was some minutes before he could speak again. “It’s my stomach, Mother,” he said. “I’ve got a terribly sore stomach.”

Monica felt his forehead. He was hot and beads of perspiration were forming as she watched. Another spasm of pain hit him and he landed on the floor. Within an hour he was tossing and turning. One minute he was roasting and the next minute he was shivering with cold. His mother washed him to bring his temperature down and gave him sips of water to drink.

“He’s in a bad way,” said Philip, Arthur’s father. “I’ve made an offering to the gods for him but maybe you should be praying to your God too.”

“I’ve been praying to the Lord God for him since before he was born,” Monica said, “and I’ve never stopped praying all of today.”

“I don’t understand you Christians,” said Philip. “How do you expect your God to answer prayers unless you give Him animal sacrifices?” “Mother,” Arthur said weakly. “I think I’m going to die.”

Monica looked at him, and stroked his hand gently. “Is he dying?” she wondered. “He’s not eaten for days and he’s lost so much weight. He’s just skin and bone.”

“Please, mother,” he said, through tears. “Please get the priest quickly. I want to go to heaven when I die.”

His mother kissed him, her tears mixing with his. “I’ll get the priest,” she said. But when she came back, not knowing whether her young son would be alive or dead, she discovered that he had made an amazing recovery! He was sitting up eating a piece of mango.

“Praise the Lord!” said the delighted Monica. “Praise the Lord!”

“I don’t think I’m going to die quite yet!” Arthur grinned. Arthur loved his mother, but despite all that she had taught him he grew up without becoming a Christian. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he went to live an immoral life. Monica must have been deeply upset, but she kept praying. Although she was proud of her son’s able mind, and that he became a professor across the Mediterranean Sea in Italy, all she really wanted for him was that he should become a Christian.

Philip, who followed the Roman gods and was not a Christian, didn’t bother about his son’s behaviour as that was how people lived in the Roman Empire in the year 386.

On day when Arthur was 32 years old, he was walking along a road in the Italian city of Milan. He passed a beggar who was sitting on the pavement laughing. “How can this man laugh?” he asked himself. “He’s sitting there on the street, owning nothing but the clothes he’s wearing, and not even sure if he’ll have a meal today, and he’s happy. The man is laughing!” Arthur walked on. “And here I am,” he thought.

“I’ve got a good job, another pretty girl, plenty of money, fine clothes and as much to eat as I want.” He stopped and looked back at the happy beggar. “And I’m miserable,” he admitted. “He’s happy with nothing and I’m miserable with everything. What a mess!” Shortly after this incident a friend of Arthur’s invited him to go to church with him. Arthur almost automatically said, he would rather not, when he remembered the beggar. “Yes, I’ll come,” he said. “I hear that this man is a good preacher.”

“You can judge for yourself,” his friend commented. Monica, who moved to Milan soon after her son, heard he was going to church and she prayed, how she prayed! “He’s a good preacher right enough,” Arthur said, as he and his friend left the church. “I’m going to have to think about what he said.” For some time he did just that. He wept over it too. “I just can’t take it in,” he told Monica, one day. “My sins are so terrible, how can God love me? How can Jesus have died for me after all that I’ve done?”

“Jesus died for us because we’re sinners,” his mother explained. “He wouldn’t have needed to die if we’d been perfect. His blood was shed on the cross for you and for me, and because of that our sins can be washed away.”

Soon afterwards Arthur was in his garden with a friend. He left his companion sitting under a tree and walked about restlessly. He was in a terrible mental muddle. “Take it up and read it; take it up and read it,” he head what sounded like a child’s voice saying. “Is this a nursery rhyme?”

he wondered, but couldn’t remember any with those words. Suddenly he realised it was God speaking to him. He rushed back to his friend who had the Bible book of Romans. Opening it up, Arthur read words that told him he should look to Jesus and not to live the immoral life he was living. Arthur suddenly knew the truth, confessed his sins and believed in Jesus. When he and his friend went back into the house, Monica learned that all her prayers and been answered. “I’m happier now than I’ve ever been,” he told his mother. “And it’s all thanks to that happy beggar who made me realize how miserable I really was, and to my mother’s prayers.” Arthur became a great student of the Bible and a teacher of the Christian faith.