Over a month ago now, Barry put up a post on prayer asking, essentially, if prayer changes things, why does so little seem to change? I meant to respond at the time, but for a variety of reasons, didn’t get to it; but then I was reminded of his post during a conversation last week with several colleagues in ministry. The question of why our prayers so often don’t get the answer for which we hope is a live one for most pastors, and it’s one for which I don’t have any kind of truly satisfactory answer; but I do have two thoughts.First, I don’t believe that prayer changes things. I believe God changes things. I don’t believe there’s power in prayer, I believe there’s power in the God to whom we pray. I do believe Pascal was right, that prayer is the means by which God gives us the dignity of causality—of doing something other than just passively absorbing his actions—but even if in prayer he allows us a voice in what he does, that doesn’t mean there’s any power in us or our actions, let alone enough power to compel him to do as we want.Second, I’m learning to trust that God knows what he’s doing. One of my colleagues last week, musing on all the times God has not given him what he’s prayed for, made a statement to the effect that “I’ve come to see all those refusals as my salvation.” Experience had taught him that God was right not to grant him his requests. The longer I go, the more times I see in my own life where that’s clearly the case, and the more I learn to trust him for his “no” as well as his “yes.”So why doesn’t God heal more? Why don’t we see people raised from the dead? I don’t know. I’ve been a part of churches where that happened; I’ve seen remarkable healing take place right before my eyes as I and others prayed. I’ve also been a part of other churches that were, as far as I could tell, no less faithful in following God—but prayers for healing were rarely granted. I don’t know why. I don’t suppose I ever will know why. Maybe it has something to do with challenging our modern emphasis on cure over care, which has certainly reached the point of being theologically problematic. But whatever the reason, I’m learning to trust God who has promised that whatever we may bear in this life, in the end, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
