Thursday 28 May. Song 62 ‘If you believe’
Words: Zimbabwean Music: Trad, arr. John Bell © WGRG / Iona Community
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOcJr5KoEj4
Featured image: Worship in a Zimbabwean church © Mai Zihonye's Village Cooking

This is a catchy chant, intended to be sung repeatedly in a prayer time, or as a response to bidding prayers. The editorial note suggests using it when praying for people to be released, whether that is from prison, or from addiction or any kind of suffering. The repeated words are, simply, ‘If you believe and I believe and we together pray, the Holy Spirit must come down and set God’s people free’.

This is a bold statement, and a challenge to the way that most of us approach prayer. We come to God, yes, trusting that he exists and that he does (sometimes) answer prayer. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, who does (sometimes) intervene and make himself known. We are open to the possibility that a miracle will happen and the people we are praying for released from their literal or metaphorical bondage.

The ‘must’ in the words here suggest that there is an expectancy rather than merely a possibility. It seems to make the Holy Spirit our servant, who has to come at our bidding. Surely that cannot be right? Perhaps the best approach here is to remind ourselves that God is Love, that the Spirit is the purest expression of God’s love, and that if we long for someone to be released from suffering, the Spirit longs for that even more. We join in with God’s deepest longing.

And if we cannot find the words to express that longing, let us claim the promise, ‘When we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God himself who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God’ (Romans 8:26-27, Jerusalem Bible translation).