Answers to Prayer

I think this is going to be one of my brief posts. If you aren't a big fan of my religious discussions, you could probably skip this one. If you are curious, I hope you enjoy.

Last week, a little girl who was in the hospital was also in a lot of people's prayers. She pulled through and most of us will say it is an answer to prayer. I have been a Christian all my life and I don't know how prayer works. It is a big freakin' mystery.* Life is full of unsolved mysteries and we don't need Robert Stack to point that out to us. There are mathematical equations that we believe, but cannot prove. There are scientific processes that give us the right answers, but we don't know why. I suppose in the long run, the similarities break down after awhile because the natural things will be explained and lead to more mysteries and prayer is just an article of faith.

Prayer doesn't make sense a lot of times. A truly faithful person looks like an absolute lunatic because no matter how the prayer is answered, that person is happy with the outcome and ascribes it to God's will. Numerous scientific tests have shown that when people were asked to pray for someone and not for another, the results were inconclusive at best. It took me awhile to get passed that. I am not sure I fully did, but that is why faith is faith.

I don't believe in prayer's outcome anymore, because it is God who is important in the prayer and not thing for which I am asking. If I pray for something, I don't get angry if I don't get it. At least not anymore. I am not resigned either. I guess I grapple with my prayers. I have prayed for all sorts of things guidance, healing, and so much more. Sometimes, I get a yes, sometimes a no. Usually I get "a wait". Waiting kills me. I want so badly for something to be done my way in my time. Yet, I see the stupidity of this.

In the mean time I am left with the problem. I used to try and fix the situation when I thought God wasn't working on it. It is ironic that when we leave things in God's hands we find ourselves trying to work on it as if He wasn't even there. What was the point of giving it up in the first place, if we take it back and start meddling with it? Can we honestly call this thing faith or that thing prayer? On the other hand do we just sort of give things up to God and expect Him to be a cosmic genie and perform all His magic tricks? Would we want doctors to stop working of figuring out what ails a patient or aid workers to forgo assisting people in need simply because God will take care of things?

What are we to think about prayer? Neither the viewpoint of relying on the prayer or believing it to be dogmatic hoop that accomplishes nothing seems good enough. Prayer requires so much more than those things. It is terribly difficult. It hurts us so much. God seems so silent and the answers don't appear in the cloud of smoke and loud bang that we had secretly anticipated. Though our circumstances do not always change when we pray; what happens is that we change when we pray.

I know this because I have been changed because I pray. I have prayed so long for certain prayers and had them been unanswered the way I wanted them to be answered. I have wanted a better job and been left in jobs I feel do not fit me. I have prayed for love and watched my closest friends get married. I have prayed for college acceptance letters and received the standard form letter: Dear sir, we regret to inform you...

I have been disappointed with my answers to prayer. I have thought God a cruel joker. I have thought my prayers to have fallen on the deafest of ears. I have been sickened by the people who seem to have all their prayers answered or worse still, those who do not pray receive the gifts of heaven.

But what are we to do when things don't go our way? We have two choices, we can abandon the whole thing or we can ask "why"? I implore you to try the latter. I ask you to search, question, and fight with yourself so as to determine what you asked of God. I not only have prayed better because of this. And I have learned so much about myself, the asker of prayers, as well as God, the One who answers the prayers. Wrestling with God is going to be a messy affair and you will get bruises and probably walk funny afterwards; but who wants to die without any scars? I am a deeply flawed individual and I want to know where those flaws are.

When we pray we are asking God to give us not only our desires, but something worth desiring. Prayer requires us to take stock of our lives and ask seriously hard questions about what we believe. Many of us (myself included) have the devil of the time doing this and we thus relegate prayer to the realm of the "magical hold over" part of our faith. It is not because we think prayers are too hard, but we believe it should be an easy affair that costs us nothing. It is like going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and saying, "Yeah, I'd like to not be a drunkard, but I still want to drink. Got that?" Maybe we should go to debt counselors and say, "Yeah, can you wave your magic debt wand and make all this go away? What you can't? Why the hell am I here then?" Or better yet, it would be like me going to a psychiatrist and saying, "I want to be a normal functioning member of society, but I like being an orange still."

Seriously, prayer requires a great deal more of us than a simple hope that things will turn out just like we want them to turn out or that it is nothing more than some simple legal mumbo jumbo that we pay to a God who isn't really there. Prayer asks us to question our motives, our actions, and our souls. We don't even receive these answers right off the bat. They take time and in the meantime we pray.

I can't explain prayer to you. I can't tell you how God works, only that He does. Just as I cannot explain how this girl pulled through, only that she did. The answer to prayer is powerful enough.


* I think "freakin'" is today's Pee Wee's playhouse mystery word. I have been using it all freakin' day.