Restores My Soul

Historical Context

Nehemiah was cupbearer to Artaxerxes I, who ruled Persia from 465 to 424 BC. He served the king at Susa, one of the empire’s royal cities. A cupbearer held real trust. He tasted the king’s wine before pouring it, a guard against poison, and stood close enough to gain real influence. In the ninth month of the king’s twentieth year, Nehemiah’s brother arrived from Judah with bad news: Jerusalem’s wall lay broken and its gates were burned. Nehemiah spent the next four months fasting and praying. He said nothing at court, because a servant was expected to hide his grief from the king. By spring it showed anyway, and the king noticed. The moment was riskier than it looked. This same king had, years earlier, ordered the work on Jerusalem’s walls to be stopped, after reports that the city kept rebelling against Persia. When Nehemiah finally spoke, he asked only to rebuild the city of his ancestors’ tombs. He left the temple out of it entirely.

Reflection

There are two kinds of prayer in this story and they need each other. One took months: nightly, wordy, grief-soaked, out of sight. The other took a second and fit inside a pause in a conversation. The second kind looks like the lesser one, a small gesture easy to skip past, but the story runs the other way around. The instant prayer worked like a reflex, and reflexes tend to be trained. What Nehemiah did in the throne room was the visible tip of what he had been doing all winter. If you want a prayer available in the doorway moments, the time to build it is the long stretch before one.