My Dear Shepherds,

The only experience I ever had with incense didn’t go well. I preached from Revelation 8:1-5 about the incense of prayer set afire in heaven. Then, as the people bowed in silent prayer, we’d arranged for someone to come down the aisle swinging a brass censer with the smoking sandalwood incense we bought at K-Mart. (This rite wasn’t covered in my seminary.) The warm fragrance began to fill the sanctuary. Then I heard the first muffled coughs. Too much incense, and we didn’t know how to stop it. People aren’t supposed to choke on prayer.

David wrote,

I call to you, LORD, come quickly to me; hear me when I call to you. May my prayer be set before you like incense; (Ps. 141:1-2)

Just before Zechariah encountered the angel of the Lord, Luke wrote, “And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.”

When the magi brought their frankincense to the infant King, they may not have known how it symbolized prayer. But they knew it was a treasure fit for a king. Frankincense comes from the resin of a rare balsam tree and was greatly prized in the ancient world.

What we know is that prayer is more fragrant and precious to God than the finest incense. Revelation 5:8 says the twenty-four elders before the Lamb “were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.”

I met a man once who’d never talked to a pastor before. “So do you just pray all day?” he asked me. Eye roll. Hardly. I always struggled with the discipline of prayer but over the years I laid countless concerns before the Lord—sick people, struggling marriages, looming confrontations, hard decisions, opening doors, sermons, and on and on.

I always knew praying was part of my God-given work, but I don’t think it ever occurred to me that my prayers were like the Magi’s frankincense. Prayer wasn’t just spiritual work but also a regal treasure I laid before Christ. Jesus welcomed my prayers not only as my duty but also as my gift. We forget that our prayers are fragrant to the Lord, an aroma like the mix of burning spices and frankincense made exclusively for God’s altar (Ex. 30:34).

Who else is expected to pray so often or well as we are? Of course, ministers must beware of the occupational hazard of prayers that are nothing more than vain repetition or public posturing, stinkers unworthy of an amen. But when we intercede, meditate, and worship as the Lord taught us, God inhales our prayers, perhaps the way we might put our head back, close our eyes, and slowly inhale the fragrance of a pine forest, roses, or the breath of a baby. Like that, I think.

Our prayers are the singular fragrance of heaven. But more: our incense has a Sinai-like mission. In John’s vision he saw an angel with a golden censer standing at the golden altar in front of the throne.

The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. (Rev. 8:4-5)

That’s why the poet and pastor, George Herbert, called prayer, “reversed thunder.” Our prayers so often seem shouted down by the world’s trouble, wickedness, and power, but in God’s good time, they become incendiary and apocalyptic. So, let us pray.

Be ye glad!

Lee Eclov recently retired after 40 years of local pastoral ministry and now focuses on ministry among pastors. He writes a weekly devotional for preachers on Preaching Today.