The Last Prayer of a Man Who Wasted Everything

In 1921, a Welsh coal miner named Evan Griffiths lost both his legs in a tunnel collapse outside Pontypridd. His wife had left. His drinking had consumed every friendship he ever had. The mine company gave him nothing. He sat in a wooden wheelchair on the steps of Bethel Chapel, unable even to wheel himself inside, and prayed the most honest prayer of his life — not a polished prayer, but the raw gasping of a man who had squandered every good thing God had placed in his hands.

The pastor heard him weeping and carried him in.

Within three years, Evan Griffiths had started a literacy program for miners' children that educated over four hundred boys and girls who would have otherwise never read a single page of Scripture.

Samson's story in Judges follows the same bruising arc. He had every gift — supernatural strength, a divine calling, the Spirit of the Lord rushing upon him — and he burned through all of it chasing his own appetites. By Judges 16:28, he is eyeless, grinding grain like an animal, entertainment for a pagan crowd. And there, chained between the pillars, he prays. Not his finest moment — his most honest one.

The God of Judges does not require a clean record before He answers. He requires only the truth. Samson leaned against those pillars with empty sockets and full faith, and the Almighty moved one final time through the weakest version of the strongest man who ever lived.