Some prayers take years. Some take seconds.

Nehemiah prayed both.

Months of weeping and fasting over a ruined city he had never even seen. Then one morning his boss, the king caught the grief on his face — and asked why? As the king’s cupbearer, his entire job was to never look troubled in the king’s presence. “Then I was terrified,” he writes.

Would ask for what he wanted or play it safe? With a prayer to the God of heaven, he spoke.

You know both kinds of prayers. The one you’ve carried for years. And the one you mutter in the car park, thirty seconds before you walk into the doctor’s waiting room.

This Sunday: a prayer that turned into a life’s work.

All welcome.