That Is My Work

“I am Jehovah thy God, Who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt: Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.” — Psalm 81:10 (ASV)

Pengwern Jones, a Welsh missionary, first met Hyde in about 1906 at a mission meeting in Ludhiana. Jones had travelled all night by train and was due to give a talk at four o'clock. Over tea, Hyde said only, “I want to see you, I shall wait for you at the door.” He was waiting. “Come with me to the Prayer Room,” he said, “we want you there.”

Jones protested that he was tired and had a talk to give. He went anyway. Hyde lay face down on the floor. People prayed, came and went; meals were forgotten, and so were Jones's tiredness and nerves. At half past three Hyde got up and took Jones for a cup of tea, refusing any for himself. At the door of the hall he took his hand:

“Go in and speak, that is your work. I shall go back to the Prayer Room to pray for you, that is my work. When the service is over, come into the Prayer Room again and we shall praise God together.”

That explains the prayer room better than anything. Hyde didn't think praying was holier than preaching. They were two halves of one job, and his half was the hidden one.

At the Sialkot conventions there were prayer rooms for men and for women, where prayer went on day and night. Jones believed it was Hyde who “spent the first nights on the watch-tower.” One missionary attending for the first time complained that the leaders should be on the platform, not hiding in a back room. Two days later he came back beaming: “I have found out the secret of this Convention — it is that Prayer Room.”

Hyde's favourite way to pray was face down on the carpet. He would say a request, wait, and say it again, many times. Jones remembered him praying the verse at the top of this chapter, repeating one word “scores of times with long pauses between”: “'Wide, Lord.' 'Wide.' 'Open wide.' 'Wide.'” In the psalm, God's sadness is that his people wouldn't open their mouths to receive what he wanted to give. Hyde was asking God to stretch their expectations.

Don't picture it as gloomy. When someone found peace with God, Hyde would start to sing, and Jones describes him so full of joy that “he claps his hands and then his feet begin to move, and look, he begins to dance for joy and others join him.” A shy, deaf, once-gloomy Presbyterian, dancing on a carpet in a church in the Punjab.

There's a warning in here too. Hyde rarely came to meals, and his bed at the convention was never used. The lad of about sixteen who looked after him would cry “because he would not eat properly and would not go to bed to sleep.” But it wasn't a rule for him. When the lunch bell rang one day, a friend heard him whisper, “Father, is it thy will that I go?” There was a pause. Then “Thank you, Father,” and he got up with a smile and went to lunch.

Every church, team or friendship group needs someone doing the hidden work. You might never be the one on stage. You could be the one praying for whoever is.

One thing to do this week: pick one person facing something hard this week: a friend with an exam, a youth leader, a brother or sister. Tell them, “That's your work; praying for you is mine.” Then actually pray for them at that time.