Care Capsule
 

Shape of Prayer
continued from Page 1

That day many lifted the little boy up to God in prayer. I prayed intensely for him in our bedroom that night and I stood facing in the direction of the hospital, where he had been born and was dying. The next morning his father showed up at my office, with a smile on his face, reporting that the little boy was going to live after all. Hundreds had prayed for him, but I had a strange, yet specific feeling, that my prayer had made the difference.

  • Locally, I see a young man from time to time who is the father of three little children. About 10 years ago, he and his wife came to me and asked me if I would sign a paper helping them to move into the adoption arena. They had exhausted every possibility to conceive. They were giving up and turning toward adoption. We talked for a while and I agreed to sign the paper, but I said, “Before you go, let’s pray about having a baby the natural way.” It was not long after that time together that they excitedly called telling me about their pregnancy.
  • Many years ago. I was a physically active young man playing a variety of sports, among which was a weekly contest against my younger brother in racquetball. I could not beat him two out of three. Since I was supposedly the family athlete, that frustrated me terribly. And I started to work at it so hard that I hurt my back. At first, I sort of ignored it and allowed a week to go by for it to heal. Then I would get back on the racquetball court, lose two out of three again, and once more wreck my back. After a while, my back was bothering me intensely all the time and it did not seem to be healing.

Weeks went by, and I found that I was living with a nearly disabling back injury. For some reason, my wife Linda suggested we contact her friend, Judy, who was a notorious prayer person. I did not hold this suggestion in particularly high regard, but by this time I was so desperate that I agreed to go to Judy’s house for prayer on my back.

To make a long story short, after two or three sessions, lying on her floor, with a handful of her friends putting their hands on my back while Judy prayed intensely, my back no longer hurt. And now I count it to be about 40 years of having no back trouble at all.

  • Another remarkable thing has happened in recent years. Professional people have done research on prayer and one of these projects was prayer for seeds. They carefully placed seeds on trays with water on them. Some had salt water on them. Then they would pray for these seeds as they anticipated germination. But there were some soaking seeds that were not prayed for. The prayed-for seeds clearly germinated and had sprouted more rapidly than those that were not prayed for. The remarkable thing is that the seeds in salt water, which was like making them sick, germinated even faster than those in clean water!

    Another remarkable part of the experiment was how they prayed. They found that when they prayed for the seeds in a general way, that is, for their well-being and their healthiness, the seeds sprouted even more quickly and more healthfully than when they prayed for the seeds to germinate and sprout. In other words, when they were directive, there were positive results, but the results were even more positive when they took what we might call a “thy will be done” approach.
  • One more example: in a medical center in San Francisco a few years ago, a prayer experiment was set up. The patients were all seriously-ill cardiac cases in a large medical center. The patient group was divided in half. Half of them were going to be prayed for and the other half would not be prayed for. The people praying were in small groups all over the United States.

After a period of time they went back and checked all the patients. Compared to the healing and improvement of others, they found significant advantages, among those who had been prayed for! None of the patients knew that they were either part of the prayed-for group or the not-prayed-for group.

The Shape of Prayer

I visualize the shape of prayer as being like an enormous triangle. Looking at the triangle, I imagine the top peak to be where God is. The bottom left angle is the one who is speaking the prayer. The third angle, the extreme right, is the one for whom prayer is being spoken.

Next, I visualize the lines going out from the one who is praying—from that lower left-hand corner. One line goes up to God and the other extends on the horizontal level to the one in need.

Then I see two lines flowing down from God. One goes to the person being prayed for and the other comes back down to the one who is offering the prayers. The line that goes to the one being prayed for is God’s Spirit and energy and love streaming with strength, healing and encouragement as needed. The line that goes from God to the one praying is God’s love and energy flowing back to the pray-er. But it does not stay there. It flows from there to the needy one.

This picture shows that God is reaching out to the hurting person, but God is also flowing through the one who is praying. This reality stresses the fact that, as much as possible, when we are praying for someone, who is hurting or in need, it is advantageous for us to see them, touch them, or at least have our minds point in their direction, knowing that God’s healing spirit is flowing through us toward them.

We are spiritual beings, not just physical.
We are spiritual beings, not just physical. It is so enormously important to remember that and to relate to each other in that way. The medical world specializes and works on the physical, predominantly. But there is abundant research evidence that indicates the vital necessity of spiritual care, of caring for the patient as a person. They need visitors, touch, smiles, companionship or they will not get well—and of course they need love that flows through presence and prayer—when possible.

Now and then people ask me what they should say when they go to visit someone who is very sick or seriously injured. My answer is almost always something like this: “Just go. Your presence is the most important part. Stay a few minutes. Hold a hand and pray briefly for their well-being and recovery.” Presence and prayer are vital medicines.

What that means is that God flows out of every one of us. We are in fact instruments of God, part of God, and needed by God to make this world a better place.

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