A Reflection on Prayer
by LewisOver the years I’ve often wondered about the “balancing side” of bad things. For instance, what good is a flood? About five years ago, experts in Indiana said that the heavy rains and flooding they got that year had the benefit of temporarily delaying the “onslaught of disease-carrying mosquitoes.” Of course wet weather is a boon for the West NIle carriers, so I’m not sure that’s a fair balance, but we’ll take it.
What about mosquitoes themselves — any redeeming value or balancing benefit? Certainly the birds and bats think so, because they eat them. So do spiders, which is why I’m on friendlier terms with most spiders than a lot of folks might be. (If you don’t like spiders, you have that in common with mosquitoes.)
But there is one balancing benefit to many, many bad things, and that benefit is prayer. I don’t like it when bad things happen in my life or in the lives of those I know and love. I don’t like it when people get sick, when they are in financially difficult times, or when they are experiencing some emotional crisis. But the good side of that is that it causes that person, and more than likely many others as well, to turn to God in prayer.
God doesn’t always grant the requests of the prayers that are spoken in the midst of life’s challenges, I know, but he always likes it when we talk to him.
So don’t wait for something bad to happen, talk to him anyway. Just talk. If the world is going to be out of balance at all, let it be on the good side for a change.
July 21st, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I’m sure to most people it’s surprising that you consider prayer itself the balancing benefit. I think most of us think of prayer as the way to evoke a balancing benefit from something awful. But I like the way you characterize prayer better, as an end in itself. I like talking with my friends, not to get something out of them but to get to know them better, to disclose something of myself, to tease, learn, challenge, question, etc. Hm, what can I tease God about today?