A WORD ABOUT PRAYER

Here's what may strike you as a radical thought:  prayer is not about results.  If it were, it would be as simple as one of my grandchildren's making a Christmas Wish List (which they are already doing, I'm sure!)  No prayer is about our relationship with God.  It is about recognizing that we are not self-sufficient.  It is about aligning my will with that of the Holy One.

I don't understand all its implications.  I don't understand how it works.  But despite my intellectual dilemma, I continue to pray, everyday.  For my needs and for a very long list of others.

I take comfort in a true story I once encountered by Elisa Morgan.

One evening as she was putting her then eleven-year old daughter Eva to bed she was distracted.  Kids pick up on such things, and so Eva asked her mother what was wrong.

Elisa told Eva that she had just learned that Amy, the teenaged daughter of one of her friends, was suffering unexplained hair loss.  Later, when young Eva said her bedtime prayers with her mother, shge made a simple request:  "Jesus," she prayed, "Please hold Amy's hair on her head."

But Amy's hair kept falling out./  And several different treatments failed to stop it.  In time she was diagnosed with a rare disease called alopecia, which can result in total and permanent hair loss.

Elisa finally shared this news with her daughter Eva, and that night as she held her mother's hand, and closed her eyes, she p[rayed a different prayer.  "Dear Jesus," she said, "If you won't hold Amy's hair on her hear, would you please hold Amy?"

I do not understand the economy of prayer.  I don't begin to comprehend its inner workings.  But I do know the heart of God.  And in that heart56 there is room for every Amy.  For in the end, God is not Santa Claus.  In the end, God is love.  All encompassing, never-ending love.  Love made known in Jesus.  Love made available to you and me each and every time we pray.