The cries are reverberating out the windows of tall apartment buildings in Wuhan. And video is filtering out worldwide. Their pleadings are meant to be encouragement to fellow Chinese in this quarantined city of 11 million people. “Add more oil!” is a figure of speech, immediately understood in a culture that excels in creative stir-fry. One always adds oil to enhance the dish and to keep the vegetables from burning. “Add oil” is similar to what we would mean when saying in English “hang tough”, or  “you can do it”. Can we? Can they? Is a shouted pep talk into the air enough?

What does one do when locked in at home, when supplies including oil and everything else are dwindling, when the hospitals are filled and dangerous? I am not frightened. I am rightly concerned. And I have been thinking for a while now about how to help newbies learn how to pray. For we need to know.

Here’s one true statement: Everyone prays. At least once in each life there is a desperate instinctual cry that goes up into thin air. Don’t tell me it’s not true. You already know it is. And if you don’t know this, you will.

Here’s another true statement: Not every prayer is effectively ‘talking to somebody’. Some cries are hopeless castings to the wind. Would you know the difference?

Still reading? If prayer is what we do, even if last resort, would it not be important to take time now to learn to do it effectively? Are random shouts out a window accomplishing much besides some attempt to hearten other citizens? Is there such a thing as really talking into God’s ear? And if there is, how does one do that even with just a whisper?

There is warning that Jesus told about this very thing. It has to do with adding oil.

After a concerned listing of signs, detailing what the end will be like before His return, Jesus eases the gravity of the situation by switching to a couple stories to emphasize their need to “be alert”. In one he paints with words a familiar Judean scene of maidens awaiting the bridegroom. The time gets long into the dark night of Jesus’ story, and when the groom finally arrives the maidens arise from sleep and trim their lamps. But the critical point of the story gets revealed at this point. Only some of the maidens were prepared with oil. In the immediacy of their need, certain ones cry out to others: “give us some of your oil!” But the prepared maidens give answer: they cannot share; they must not. Instead they instruct the unprepared maidens to go to the source for oil themselves.

In this is the first secret of prayer: Go to the Source for the oil, and start out now.

In both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, oil is a reference for the protecting, softening and sustaining spirit of the living God. He is the oil. He is the source.

The image in my post is of the Ophthalmologist who first warned of the virus which now ravages his city. He has already succumbed, but according to his own testimony, he had oil for his own lamp.