Back to Life

I had a conversation recently with a woman who is a medical marvel. Several years ago, she collapsed and hovered on the edge of death for months, but she had a huge network of friends and colleagues who prayed her through one crisis after another. She believes all those prayers pulled her back from the grave.

Inspiring story, isn't it? Yet I have been wondering whether all those prayers really changed God's mind about the outcome of her illness - and if they did, why would we think that we know better than God about how the events of our lives should turn out?

For instance, I once read a story about someone who had been in a car accident and who had fervent prayer warriors pleading for his recovery. While the medics were working on him, he had an out-of-body experience that was exquisite. He was in heaven and felt complete peace, pure love and perfect joy. He never wanted it to end. Suddenly, he was wrenched from that state and returned to earth and all he could feel was a deep sense of loss. His friends excitedly told him later that he had died and the doctors had been able to get his heart started again. They were filled with thanksgiving that God had answered their prayers. From his perspective, it was a mixed blessing.

In the Lord's Prayer, we pray, "Thy will be done," but we really don't believe that. We give God directions all the time, believing that we know what is best for us and our friends. That's scary. The God who lives outside of time, who can see our lives from their start to their finish with all their connections and consequences, will bend to the wishes of a united group of people who can't even see around the corner. That's quite a responsibility.

So, should we stop praying because we don't know what to pray for? I don't think that's the answer, but maybe we might be less specific in our desires. What we really want from God, I would imagine, is happiness and inner peace for ourselves and others. This may be the best prayer we could utter.

Perhaps what we are called to do is to surround a person with loving thoughts for their well being. If we flood our memories with positive regard for him or her and recruit the angels, the saints and our friends to do the same, the overflow of all that love must have a positive outcome because Love never fails. Our prayer then arises out of a selfless desire for another's good and not out of our own agenda.

Maybe God directs us to pray together because the unity that results from so many voices in loving agreement is so powerful that what is not loving cannot stand in its way for long. We wouldn't tolerate the social conditions that cause so much pain to so many and we wouldn't allow research into diseases to languish for lack of money. Our lives would certainly change for the better.

The world might look very different if we could all agree on how we want it to look.