Praying for a miracle at pump

Among the miracles Jesus wrought was turning water into wine for a wedding reception, as well as multiplying loaves and fishes for the hungry multitudes. There is no account in the Gospels of his turning water into gasoline.

But that is precisely the kind of miracle Americans are tempted to pray for. As I write, the world price of petroleum has reached $139 a barrel, and the price at the gas pump has topped $4 a gallon.

As you might imagine, God’s intercession is being sought by people of faith whose livelihoods depend on the automobile and the delivery truck.

Rocky Twyman is actually doing something about it. From his home in Rockville, Md., he has masterminded a group prayer movement at gas stations from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. The peaceful demonstrators he motivates are ordinary motorists with extraordinary faith.

Twyman, 59, a black Seventh-day Adventist, has been dismissed as a naive do-gooder, but he has staged successful campaigns for tsunami relief and feeding the hungry. Last year he organized prayers for drought-afflicted Georgia. Sure enough, rain eventually fell.

Earlier, he enrolled 14,000 Marylanders in a national bone-marrow registry aimed at saving the lives of racial minorities.

Now, at gas stations in the nation’s capital, he gathers motorists to hold hands and pray at the pump. To the tune of “We Shall Overcome,” they sing, “Gas price will come down someday.”

Twyman isn’t counting on a miracle, convinced that true faith doesn’t require instant gratification. “This whole thing,” he believes, “is a wake-up call from God to Americans” that draws attention to the apocalypse. “I think through this crisis, God is trying to call us back to depend on Him more.”

As you might imagine, service station managers and neighboring businesses are not keen to have prospective customers make their way through the gathered demonstrators and the TV crews that keep track of them. It’s not the kind of free publicity that attracts new business, especially when the price of the product on offer is already so high.

If a miracle isn’t in the offing, what is? Well, international attention to an American problem just might put some pressure on the world market and on politicians. The “Pray at the Pump” movement has been carried by news outlets in nations as distant as Australia and Russia. The Germans sent a television crew to the United States as part of a documentary on soaring energy prices.

Johannes Wiebus, the German TV producer, noted that his fellow countrymen typically confine prayer to church. He added that Germans already pay twice as much for gas than Americans do and would be “jumping for joy” to get gas at $4 a gallon.

Wiebus wondered aloud whether a miracle would be needed: “Why doesn’t the government invest more in public transit? Why don’t people walk? Why don’t people live and work in cities?”

Scripps Howard News Service