WHEN PRAYER IS HEARD

There was a Christian lady who lived next door to an atheist. Everyday, when the lady prayed, the atheist, a man could hear her. He thought to himself: "She sure is crazy, praying all the time like that. Doesn't she know there is no God?"
      
      Many times while she was praying, he would go to her house and harass her, saying "Lady, why do you pray all the time? Don't you know there is no God?" But she kept on praying.
      
      One day, she ran out of groceries. As usual, she was praying to the Lord explaining her situation and thanking Him for what He was going to do.
      
      AS USUAL, the atheist heard her praying and thought to himself. "Humph . . .I'll fix her."
      
      He went to the grocery store, purchased a whole bunch of groceries, took them to her house, dropped them off on the front porch, rang the door bell and then hid in the bushes to see what she would do. When she opened the door and saw the groceries, she began to praise the Lord with all her heart, jumping, singing and shouting everywhere!
      
      The atheist then jumped out of the bushes and told her, "You old crazy lady, God didn't buy you those groceries, I bought those groceries!"
      
      Well, she broke out and started running down the street, shouting and praising the Lord. When he finally caught up to her, he asked what her problem was . . .

 She said, "I knew the Lord would provide me with some groceries, but I didn't know he was going to make the devil pay for them!"

Once many years ago, in the Children’s ward as I was walking around the North Shore University Hospital out in Manhasset, NY, waiting for a simple procedure to be completed on my son, I wandered over to a pay phone to call my wife. But ahead of me was this woman on the phone, and she was sobbing into the receiver as she related the immanent death of a child to someone. Of course I don’t recall all the conversation except for one part: her begging someone to prayer on the other end of the phone.

That incident shook me up for a few days, until I was facing the same situation, and needed prayers. My son was dying and there seemed to be nothing to stop the event. I had hope because I wasn’t a doctor and didn’t think he would die until they told me so! Then recently someone posted on Facebook a family in dire need of prayers for their child, a child about to lose her heels and toes or worst, her feet.

It is without a doubt the one thing we all do, no matter how we pray, something that our hearts dictate to us, and we pray in our own way, sometimes for the impossible, sometimes for the relief of suffering, but we pray.

There are times when we pray just to keep a passing soul on a straight path to God, like when my mom died, and I wanted to pray alone, in my heart and soul, not ostentatiously holding hands with someone, but quietly in my mind, with the verbiage of fixed prayer we sometimes utter without really hearing what we say. We all have our ways. I was criticized for doing that, but I deal with my pain in my own way, not how others do it.

But this prayer thing is something that none of us understand, none of us know quite what to make of it. We seek to have our prayers answered by God, and we wonder when he doesn’t hear us. Or does he hear us then answers in his own way? Sometimes we can’t alter the event with prayer but can survive the outcome with prayer, God’s gift to us is to hear us and carry us through pain and sorrow, fear and the depth of despair, with the courage we gather in the belief in God, not in the outcome itself. God’s will be done.

You can’t alter the inevitable, but you can alter how you behave and withstand the blows and slings and arrows of life through prayer. Even if you don’t believe in God, you do take on a path of peaceful contemplation of some kind. Whether we pray for ourselves or loved ones, events or conclusions, we need prayer in our hearts and minds to get through the day.

Believe me I am no saint, I shouldn’t even comment on prayer, but it is what I feel and just like to share this with you. I hope all your prayers are answered in the best way, whether you believe in God or not.