I have often pondered what prayer actually does. In my personal prayers, I pray for many people who are sick in body, mind or estate – including myself. But what am I asking God to actually do? Do I want God to hear my prayer requests and decide He/She/It will respond to my request? On one level that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. If God is all good and all powerful, wouldn’t God do it anyway? God shouldn’t need my urging to act. I end my prayers with the caveat – “You know our needs better than we know them ourselves. Fulfill these requests and petitions as may be best for us.” However, deep in my heart I hope God’s will and mine line up and are in sync.
There are stories in the
Bible of people changing God’s mind. In one case Abraham bargains with
God about the number of righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah to change God’s
mind and not destroy the city (Genesis 18). Abraham negotiated the number
of righteous men required down to 10. The bible has other instances where
God had a change of mind (heart?) However, in today’s times there are
many prayers in which God doesn’t seem to answer them. If God did there
would be many people alive today who were stuck down before what seemed to be
their time. There would be many fewer displaced and injured innocent
people in war zones. I could go on but I’m sure you get the point.
There is the case of Gretta Vosper,
a United Church of Canada ordained minister who is a declared atheist.
She declares that she changed her belief about God because her daughter’s
beloved teacher was ill and died despite her and her daughter’s prayers.
From what I read; Vosper believes in a God but not one that intervenes in human
affairs in any way. In the United Church congregation where she is
minister, she has eliminated the Lord’s Prayer and probably other prayers of
intercession. The question remains: what do I believe about prayer?
I have prayed for people who have not been healed and returned to health and
wholeness. Some I have prayed for have recovered from sickness in body or
mind or estate. But is that because of prayers by me and/or others?
I have found Richard Rohr to be very helpful in all this. He writes:
I believe prayer is a symbiotic
relationship with life and with God, a synergy which creates a result larger
than the exchange itself. We ask not to change God, but to change
ourselves. We pray to form a living relationship, not to get things
done. (That is why Jesus says all prayers are answered, which does
not appear to be true, according to the evidence!) God knows that we need
to pray to keep the symbiotic relationship moving and growing. Prayer is not a
way to try to control God, or even to get what we want.
Prayers of intercession or petition
are one way of situating our life within total honesty and structural truth. We
are all forever beggars before God and the universe. We can never engineer or
guide our own transformation or conversion. If we try, don’t it will be a
self-centered and well-controlled version of conversion, with most of our
preferences and addictions still fully in place, but now
well-disguised. Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation July 21, 2024
For me this is a good reason to
pray. I cannot say if prayers of intercession work in the way that people
want them to i.e. with the results they pray for. We do have the example
of Jesus Christ who did prayer and taught his disciples and us how to
pray. However, I also believe that prayer changes the person who prays.
That is more than enough reason to continue to pray.
May you be blessed to pray and be
prayed for on your journey.
