I have recently been thinking about prayer, what it might do, what we want it to do, how to do it, etc. I am still working on what it means for me.

Is the power of love different than the power of prayer, or is it really the same thing? Is there a omnipotent power or being? Is there such thing as divine intervention or is it just luck, a crap shoot? One thing for sure is that prayer won’t hurt.

The movie Shadowlands, is about C.S. Lewis’s (author of the Narnia Chronicles and numerous Christian writings.) late life marriage to Joy Davidson, who develops cancer. When she goes into remission, the dean of Oxford, where Lewis taught, said to Lewis, “Your prayers have been answered!’ Lewis stared at him for a moment, and said something like, “that’s not why I pray…I pray because I can’t help it…I pray because it flows out of me…prayer doesn’t change God; prayer changes me”.

I have always found that a moving admission from a man of faith, and an expression of what sounds like truth to me. Things are what they are, and we are what we are: human.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference.” — Alcoholics Anonymous

That’s pretty much the way I try to live my life.

Joel T. Nowak MA, MSW