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.