“My prayers are with you.” How many times have you heard that or something close? I try to avoid promising to pray for people because I often forget after the energy of the moment.
We are now beginning to pass the energy of the moment in regard to the two hurricanes that have touched on the United States. I am sure that the people with water in their living rooms don’t agree with that. If you are on the west coast of Florida you are still worried. If you live in a certain part of Mexico you might still be looking for family in the wreckage. At church yesterday they were still asking people to volunteer in the recovery. But for most of us the drama is receding and we are continuing with our regular lives.
At times like this I wonder how much the prayers helped. I wonder this as a devout Christian who believes that prayer changes things, but how much? As I look at Hurricane Harvey and the billions of dollars in damage and the lives lost it is easy to focus on that and not stop to wonder why any houses are still standing and why tens of thousands are not dead. I would suggest the prayers of God’s people.
How about Hurricane Irma? I checked a local news source and had to read most of the article before I found that it was down to a category 1 hurricane at this point. Yawn. Isn’t high school football starting? Not so fast. At one point all we heard about was category 5 and Florida being wiped out. What happened? Maybe prayer. Consider how much more damage and death we would have seen if the track of the storm had been just a few degrees different.
Prayer is harder to track than a hurricane. It is different from the scientific method because it is not an experiment you can go back and run over again with different variables. All you can do is look at the results and wonder, “What happened?”
Let me go out on even thinner ice. We have two massive hurricanes and have less than 100 dead. Other parts of the world experience similar touches of weather and have thousands dead. One of the questions I will always wonder about, and plan to ask about after the resurrection, is “How much does the Christian salt repel disaster in places like America?” There are cases in the Bible from the last plague in Egypt to the escape clause for Sodom that indicate God’s people don’t have the same amount of tragedy as the nations that have rejected Him.
It is a touchy subject but one we can wonder about in the recesses of our hearts.
homo unius libri
I've promised prayer in this situation because I knew that I'd be praying anyway. Usually, i say a prayer while I'm still looking at the request and then say "prayed." I figure if I forget later, I've made no false promises, if I remember, so much the better.
ReplyDeleteI hear you. You are still on my Monday through Friday list. I can't promise week-ends though.
DeleteGrace and peace
I ponder many of the same points.
ReplyDeleteWhen I tell someone I will pray for them, I have to write myself a note to remember to do it more than once. Otherwise, I tell them that I am praying for them right now. It just disturbs me that people say they're praying as a sort of passing social remark, like "have a nice day." It should be a far more serious statement than that.
And now we are often being told to think good thoughts.
DeleteGrace and peace