At work not a day goes by without friends showing more faith in prayer
than I do. It’s hard to make the case that praying actually works. One family’s
prayer might be answered in the search for a dream home, while another’s supplication
for their life might go un-answered. While some people pray and marvel at nature’s
abundance, others see calamity take everything mercilessly away. There are parents
who pray for their children to be accepted at elite schools, while others plead
for their children’s fading health. We believe that if we have faith and implore
God from the bottom of our heart, then supernatural intervention is possible,
if not likely. But can we demonstrate the power of prayers beyond our mundane
lives? I am a believer, though I cannot help but think that divine intercession
ought to be as universal as the gravity that holds planets in a dance, or as
the forces that bind atoms. And yet the responses to prayers defy universality.
In the sphere of great evil, where innocents perish, children suffer
and people are tortured, shouldn’t the saving hand of a caring God be easily
witnessed? Where savagery terrorizes, disease ravages and life clings but by a
thread, shouldn’t prayers be most effective? It may be true that saints
intervene to miraculously heal illnesses, but aren’t there more meaningful ways
to assert sovereignty? The concept of freewill explains much, but an inscrutable
abyss remains in which believers capitulate to life’s arbitrariness. I hide my feelings
when refugees insist, “God brought us here and he will show us the way
forward!” I know this isn’t the Red Sea and there is no Moses to part waters
and change the course of history. Around the world there are millions fleeing
gross, flagrant and mass violations of human rights by wicked criminals.
Enduring faith carries them forward and only fervent prayers stand between a terrible
reality and future hope.
