Power of prayer
Amajority of the many appreciated messages I’ve received since launching my battle with the beast known as squamous cell cancer have offered prayers for my healing and recovery.
They mean so much because I’ve always believed in the efficacy of sincere prayers, a controversial topic in circles that demand empirical evidence (such as predictable results) for prayers to be considered effective. Thus far over many years that hasn’t happened. I seriously doubt predictable results ever will.
With something as personal and subjective as one’s appeal to their creator, hard evidence isn’t possible. So we are left with the agreement to disagree on any positive difference prayer makes in our influencing our lives.
When undergoing 35 days of radiation therapy, I spent most of the time beneath the penetrating ray praying for strength and support while asking that this treatment be successful and I make it through the exhausting course.
It was those prayers and simply knowing so many others said they were offering supplications on my behalf that comforted and reassured me.
At the same time, if I’m being realistic (and honest) about the subject, I know the word “pray” when someone tells another they are praying for them represents support and encouragement at the highest possible level, rather than a firm commitment to drop to one’s knees and pray with heartfelt conviction.
To me, it’s a positive if telling another you are praying for them eases their mind and offers emotional comfort in a time in need. I’ve certainly done this many times with the best intentions as a way to let another know I care about them on the deepest spiritual level.
We realize not all, or even most, prayers are answered considering all that are offered around the world every day. And those that go unanswered provide fodder for the skeptical to ask why yours was answered while another’s wasn’t. Several in-depth government studies found prayer had no effect on the outcome of medical treatments.
Unanswered prayers raise a legitimate question, one I feel certain many a priest, rabbi and minister have tackled when their flocks seek answers.
I suppose the response that makes the most sense theologically is that God sometimes pauses before answering prayers as he waits for us to make the correct decision.
On other occasions, God may require us to patiently await an answer so we can build our faith and trust in him, or sometimes he might provide us with answers, but not necessarily what we’d hoped for.
Revered theologian and author C.S. Lewis believed “prayer is God’s idea, not ours. It is his gift to us, and it has a specific role in his plan for our lives and the world,” according to the
C.S. Lewis Institute. The institute says Lewis certainly believed and taught this.
“On several occasions, when talking of prayer,” the institute wrote, “he quoted with approval the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal’s famous statement that God ‘instituted prayer in order to give his creatures the dignity of causality.’
“Some of us may find it hard to believe that God allows human beings to cause real events to happen through prayer. Lewis had no such misgivings. ‘It may be a mystery why he should allow us to cause real events at all; but it is no odder that he should allow us to cause them by praying than by any other method.’”
My experience with prayer has been a mixed bag when it comes to results. Some came to pass while others didn’t. I’ve never been wise enough to determine why. Perhaps Garth Brooks had the answer when he sang that he thanked “God for unanswered prayers.”
Recent history is filled with examples of prayers miraculously answered.
We watched a true story the other night about a very ill little girl who fell 30 feet through the hole of a hollowed-out tree while climbing.
She was rescued and, at the same time, cured of her two rare, life-threatening digestive disorders when the family and community prayed for her.
There’s a similar based-in-truth story of answered prayers called “The Cokeville Miracle” about a classroom of young Cokeville, Wyo., students threatened by an insane man with a homemade gas-fueled firebomb.
A number of children in that classroom agreed they they saw what appeared to be angels circling protectively around them as they prayed together in the room just before the bomb exploded, upward through the roof rather than spreading across the room’s interior as planned. The misfired explosion saved all their lives.
In the end, the answer may be as simple as, unlike the scientific approach, believing prayer helps while perhaps amplifying the effects should two or more of us pray together with deep conviction.
That’s pretty much what it says in the 18th chapter of the Book of Matthew anyway.
Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.