A Small Black Stone

by Lisa LaLonde

At the 2005 CFO Annual Meeting in Plymouth, MN, I attended the United Prayer Tower Prayer Council Meeting for the first time. On the way in to the meeting, we were asked to pick up a small stone in a box by the door. We were told it should represent some burden we were carrying. I have been in CFO long enough to know that by the end of our time together, we would be given a way to release that burden in some fashion, whether casting it into a river (it would have to be imaginary here) or collectively building a pile of memorial stones like the Israelites did when God rescued them. So I selected my stone with some thought.

When you are in leadership, so many times your needs are put on the back burner while you pour out to others. So I had not had any opportunity to share with anyone that my father had a small black spot on his lung. While I was away, he was going to the doctor again to try to figure out what it was. I had seen the X-ray, so I was able to select a small black stone that was the size of the spot on his lungs. My prayer was without words as I felt the smoothness of the pebble, insignificant in size yet ominous and threatening. I slipped it into my pocket.

Annual meetings rush along like a fast moving river, so before long I was rushed along with it. It was only later, when I found the small black stone still in my pocket, that I realized we had run out of time in the UPT meeting and had no time to dispose of our stones! Instead of feeling robbed of closure, I carried that stone in my pocket for the ensuing days. It became a way of praying, a way of saying “I love you, Daddy.” I had shared with a few trusted friends by then, and they were standing with me. But the river was rushing on! Who had time to intercede or ponder for a small stone and the love it represented? It became my silent companion.

Before too long, I received a report from home. The small black spot on Dad’s lung was shrinking, for no reason at all. I decided to keep the small black stone as a reminder that sometimes we don’t need to “do something” with our request besides make it.. The stone had not been cast into a physical river, but rather the river of the Spirit of God, fast moving and trustworthy. While I had been serving Him, he had been faithfully “working all things together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.” (Rom 8:28) Even a silent prayer, the size of a small black stone, is heard in the ears of the listening Lord of Heaven.

© 2006 Cincogatos Productions