{"id":2236,"date":"2015-06-21T13:51:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T19:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=2236"},"modified":"2015-06-21T13:51:42","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T19:51:42","slug":"oh-c-more-on-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/06\/oh-c-more-on-prayer.html","title":{"rendered":"Oh, c*&@: more on prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Hi, everyone. \u00a0Please pray for healing for my friend R., who is undergoing treatment for cancer, and for his wife and children (four of them, ages 7 \u2013 14) at this difficult time.<\/p>\n

********************<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how this post is supposed to go. \u00a0But:<\/p>\n

A couple days ago, I wrote a little post on gratitude<\/a>, and how I have a hard time with idea of being grateful for life circumstances (even though, in the grand scheme of things, my family\u2019s life circumstances are pretty good), with the fact that this implies (a) God is in charge of the specifics of one\u2019s life circumstances and (b) that if my life is good because of his infinite plan, the reverse is true of others worse off.<\/p>\n

A while earlier I had written two other posts on the subject:<\/p>\n

At Christmas, I told you<\/a>, in the context of gratitude and prayer, about a friend recently diagnosed with cancer. \u00a0And, in January, I updated you<\/a> on our friend, and on my skepticism about prayer. \u00a0Here\u2019s what I wrote at the time:<\/p>\n

Do you believe in the power of prayer, that is, do you believe that prayers for healing, for instance, will (or might) be answered?<\/p>\n

Yeah, I struggle with this. Very often, people use the cop-out of \u201cI pray that God\u2019s will will be done\u201d \u2014 but if that\u2019s the case, why bother praying? Same thing with \u201cGod answers prayers \u2014 it\u2019s just that sometimes the answer isn\u2019t what you expect.\u201d<\/p>\n

If I believe, for instance, that God will bring about an outcome with respect to our friend\u2019s cancer battle (the cancer isn\u2019t hypothetical \u2013 he\u2019s in a clinical trial right now \u2013 just the belief) that will be the \u201cright\u201d outcome for his Divine Plan, then is there a point to praying for healing? Should we instead pray that, whatever the outcome, God provides emotional and spiritual strength to the family?<\/p>\n

Or do you believe that, given a sufficient quantity of prayer, we may win the \u201cmiracle lottery\u201d and he may be the recipient of a genuine miracle, or the minor miracle that this experimental treatment proves to be successful? (This is the early stages of a trial, just establishing whether the drug has potential, so we\u2019re not looking at double-blind randomized trials, where we don\u2019t know if he\u2019s got the placebo or not.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The further update? \u00a0Not good. \u00a0In fact, really bad. \u00a0The cancer is progressing despite the experimental treatment, so now they\u2019re trying another, also experimental treatment. \u00a0My husband is planning on calling today during his layover; they\u2019re currently in Houston (where my husband has his layover, but that\u2019s just coincidence; the layover\u2019s too short to cab it over to the hospital and back) at a specialist hospital.<\/p>\n

And \u2014 look, in the context of the whole \u201cwhy I remain Catholic\u201d bit, it strikes me that I don\u2019t have much trouble assenting to all manner of things that cause others to walk right out the door (no women\u2019s ordination? \u00a0fine by me), but I have a lot of trouble with prayer. \u00a0Our friend is a good guy. \u00a0If anyone deserves a miracle, he does. \u00a0But why would God require an accumulation of a given quantity of prayers, or prayers by the \u201cright\u201d people, or by finding just the right patron saint to pray to?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi, everyone. \u00a0Please pray for healing for my friend R., who is undergoing treatment for cancer, and for his wife and children (four of them, ages 7 \u2013 14) at this difficult time. ******************** That\u2019s how this post is supposed to go. \u00a0But: A couple days ago, I wrote a little post on gratitude, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nOh, c*&@: more on prayer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hi, everyone. \u00a0Please pray for healing for my friend R., who is undergoing treatment for cancer, and for his wife and children (four of them, ages 7 - 14)\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/06\/oh-c-more-on-prayer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oh, c*&@: more on prayer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hi, everyone. \u00a0Please pray for healing for my friend R., who is undergoing treatment for cancer, and for his wife and children (four of them, ages 7 - 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