Does praying really work in today's world?  It is a fitting question given all of the new skeptics that are out there.  You may not notice as much as I do how many writers or opinion makers are downplaying the role of faith, prayer and the miraculous in these times.  Books, articles, and interviews are in abundance in telling us who believe that we are stupid for pursuing this course.  Science is becoming the new religion of the masses.  The elite tell us that this world is all there is and ever will be.  Not even Isaac Newton took his theory to that extreme.  I saw a book the other night at the store that discusses how harmful religion can be to a materialistic and unspiritual world.  We are to look to science to have all of the answers now when they cannot answer the most basic questions of life.

What are we to do when faced with such hostility? That is only one aspect of the issue.  We need some resolution just for our own peace of mind.  The problems we face such as cancer lead to so many different troubles that we can be overtaken by them.  Can we pray when our emotions are so stirred we cannot feel nor see our say to God?  Doctors and the like can tend to be hopeless in their conversations with patients.  This one I know about all too well.  There are some great physicians out there who do understand faith but there are a few that see no further than their charts.  We can wind up letting the words of our healer to keep us from seeing beyond the moment.  Then we have moments when the physical interferes with our ability to focus on the Father.  It can be confusing and a reality that our pain blocks our trust in God.  Grief limits our heart in openness to Him.  It sure sounds like we often face more obstacles to praying than we have help.

I find that far too much of my own thinking is limited to the here and now without a dynamic concept of the bigness of God.  Maybe this happened years ago when my honest desire was to be able to answer the deep questions both by faith and also with a concrete explanation to others.  My heart was in the right place but my gut says it caused some drift spiritually.  There was still a belief in God, praying, and miracles but there was also a bit of a loss of that wondrous mystery of the divine.   Such an admission is not easy and may shock you a little but it is honest.  It is much like how so many of us get caught up in the daily stuff of life until we forget that greatness of God in our journey.  The faith just seems distant and somehow shrouded in the gloom of our reality.  It happens to many of us along the way.  The key is knowing it does not have to remain that way.

Praying does work.  I know because of my last three months of diagnosis, treatment, and now going into a stem cell transplant.  My disease came back with a vengeance in its attempt to kill me.  Here is when my guard was let down to pray with any and all who would allow it.  What was an aggressive cancer gave way to praying and to the medicine.  This did not happen by accident but by the prayers of people.  I let people put oil on me, some were quiet prayers and some were on the noisy side.  Mostly my approach was to silently agree with those words as well as pray for those who interceded for me.  My times of scripture reading became not just about the information but also about what was God saying.  My mind is still slowly changing to adjust to such an effort.  But my conclusion is miracles happen even if rare and often unexpected.

Remember that the very word miracle means we do not take it for granted.  We are never asked to trust solely for the miracle but by the words of God.  My discovery is there are small miracles of all sizes as we go through life.  God's timing often takes us by surprise as we pray.  We are called to believe that this world is not at all the end of life.  The scientist may be noble in effort but lacks in any capacity to help us with the real questions of life.  Life only means what we can see and feel in the material world in that view.  How depressing is that?  I read recently that faith is not leaping into the darkness but rather it is a leap into the light of who God is.  That statement grabbed me in a fresh way.  It is far different than how we normally view faith.  We live one day at a time in trust of the God who is already reaching out to us in His presence and power.  We pray even when we do not feel like it or when it all seems too big for God to handle.  We just keep praying for others who join us in the journey to keep our hearts fresh and open.  We find that this changes our heart for God and our heart for others.  That is a miracle in itself.

Bro. Trey