Well perhaps not just from the prayer. The prayer came from what was on Nehemiah’s heart. A great sadness in fact. A grief about what had happened to his beloved city.
He had a good job. He could have stayed as an expatriate. But his mind was on the place where God’s promises were centred.
What made him a foreigner was that he wanted to be somewhere else. Christians are also foreigners. But some of us don’t want to live somewhere else. Not in a geographical sense but in a spiritual sense (although geography and spirit are connected). It is possible to become so embedded in our culture and world environment that we lose interest in the kingdom of God.
But some of us also long for the greater coming of Jesus’ kingdom. And every now and then an opportunity presents itself to work for that kingdom in a new or more effective way.
And then the heart can leap and cry out to the God of heaven and ask for his help.
Dale