Wednesday, April 22, 2009

What is the point of prayer?

Craig and I went on a mini vacation a few days ago. It was a blast and Captain Morgan and Jose Cuervo tried to kill me, no lie. Thankfully my husband was there to put the kibosh on anything drunken related (how can he still be level headed with 16 shots and Lyrica in him?) We SO need to get away like that more often. I think next time we'll bring some friends so we don't end up sitting in the hotel bar spilling our life story to random strangers, but it was fun.

Shaylin is doing well. We were nervous about leaving her but she did ok. She's eating well again, still tires out quickly but I'm not expecting that to go away quickly, knowing how Mono works.

So, onto my exploration of my faith. As the title says, I've been thinking a lot about what prayer is, and why we do it. Then yesterday a friend sent me a sappy make you cry type email and I called her after I watched it and we contemplated the meaning of life, er, prayer.

I don't think many people use prayer as it was intended. I think prayer is a chat with God. A conversation of speaking and then listening just as we do with any other conversation.

So why, when someone is ill for instance, do we incorporate prayer chains and get on our knees and beg God to do our will?

You see, the way I see it, if God is who I've been taught he is. It's not really a popularity contest. A single person or a group of thousands isn't going to matter, is it? I mean, does God really hold contests and say "ok, if 15,000 people ask me to save this child, I will. Well no, it's not like that. So why do we recruit our friends, family, and strangers to pray for us in our time of need?

I've even noticed at family dinners people say things like "Bless this food and blah blah blah". Well, what if God doesn't WANT to bless our food? What if he has already decided that we are going to get a whopping case of salmonella from our eggs, is the fact that we ask him not to going to change anything? Is God just going to say "well, since you asked...." or, on the flipside if we DON'T pray for our food is God going to say "well, you didn't pray for your food to be blessed, so now you are going to vomit for 2 days".

I think many of us pray and it means nothing. It's just a simple ritual we do because it's what we have always been taught to do, just as we get out of bed and brush our teeth. Honestly our teeth don't really care if we brush them at 7am or at 9am.

Here's what I think. Stop jamming up the God airwaves with meaningless things, then maybe when we really need something it will get through.

1 comment:

tropicalg77 said...

Prayer is what you personally make of it, and a complete personal journey with Him.

All things are possible through Him.