Take this for what it's worth, but I had an odd experience just before apartheid fell. My friends took me to see a movie called A Dry, White Season in which stars like Marlon Brando, Susan Sarandon and Donald Sutherland banded together in a movie whose goal was to implicate the audience in the horrors of apartheid. Its point was that benevolent, non-racist, liberal onlookers were just as guilty as the Afrikaans policemen who busted black heads. Once you were aware of just how bad apartheid was-and the movie had just made you aware-if you did nothing, you should prepare for a comfy eternity in hell.

I was pissed off. My friends cheerily debriefed the movie, talking about the merits of Brando's South African accent and whether the movie dragged in patches. And I found myself shouting, "Are you out of your minds? Were you watching the same movie as me? They don't care if you like it! It's a trick! They lured us into the theater, took our eight bucks, and now they've implicated us in freaking apartheid!" My friends looked at me blankly for a moment until someone hazarded, "I thought Susan Sarandon was great.

I was in church the next day, but couldn't get apartheid out of my mind. Was I supposed to post myself on my congressman's door? Was I supposed to quit my job, travel to Johannesburg and get a job in a mine for solidarity? And then the thought hit me-perhaps from God?-that one thing I could do as someone who'd seen some great things happen through prayer was pray for South Africa every day until apartheid fell.

Three months later apartheid fell. Bloodlessly. Miraculously. While I'm, of course, tempted to say now you know who to thank, I'll refrain. Clearly a lot more than my prayers was going on there. But what if it wouldn't be true to say that a lot less than my prayers was going on there? What if there's a God who calls people all over the world to join in prayer for things that are clearly on his heart? What if that's a part of how the world works?

I bring this up as my beloved Lebanon is in shambles. I took the first of my visits to Lebanon four years ago to catch up with a friend who was among the first Westerners to move to Lebanon after their civil war of the 1980s. Through him, I met an amazing array of folks who were giving themselves at some sacrifice to rebuild the country-folks working in Palestinian camps, for one, or the only Westerners living among Hezbollah, making friends and pointing to the way of peace, or Parliamentarians calling for prayer for their country, facing death threats from those who wanted war. Pretty fascinating people.

And now the bombs are falling again, and I get half a dozen harrowing emails a day from these folks, some still in the country as the buildings explode, and some who have just evacuated, heartbroken, leaving everything behind including people they love.

And the fragile hope that Lebanon represents as a democratic buffer country between Syria and Israel is teetering. And perhaps by the time you read this the immediate crisis will have receded (happily Hezbollah is getting pressure this time from Saudi Arabia and Egypt and some other unexpected sources) or perhaps it will have escalated and we'll be facing something horrific-not just to my good-spirited friends in the area, but to you, me and everyone.

So can I make an appeal that you pray for Lebanon today? Perhaps you have something more powerful in mind that you can pull off in response to the situation. But perhaps your seemingly-puny prayers have more power than you possibly could guess-perhaps in the end they have even more power than your fervently-held opinion about who's right and who's wrong and what governments should be doing and would be doing if you held any power, doggonit, but you don't.

So perhaps, just for grins, you can pray for Lebanon today. And perhaps it will cross your mind tomorrow. Pray for Lebanon.