The Prayer of a Righteous Man

66 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE The Prayer of a Righteous Man Down on his knees in the shoulder gravel, a man in a dark suit beside a maroon cockroach of a car, one hand with Bible held high, the other hovering above the hood of the AMC Pacer his son gave him after years of buses, donkeys and moped taxis, with only cacti and scrub-brush as witness to the droplets of sweat falling and marking the chalky earth, his mouth shouts scripture's promises, his prayer rises to God's throne with the smoke of burnt oil and cracked head gasket, an incense much too modern for his request that the God, who kept the Sidonian widow in flour and oil through the drought, would fill his engine with the power that took Elijah to heaven in a ball of fire. JEREMY PADEN ...