My wife’s eighty-seven year old aunt passed away recently, and we, along with her brother and mother made the three hour drive to Alabama for the funeral beneath the sunny skies and bare trees of January. And amidst seventies and eighties hits and show tunes from the radio, we talked about prayer.
Our aunt’s family has been having a difficult run for a number of years. My wife’s uncle has been in ill health for better than a year, and her cousin has struggled with a condition that is as mysterious as upsetting. All this leaves his wife, our late Aunt’s daughter-in-law, with well more can she can handle. Thoughts of this in the dull post-Christmas world led my Mother-in-Law to admit that while she prays, she’s not sure if it does anything at all.
It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with for months. If God knows what’s happening here on Earth, is there any need to pass along that information, to provide updates in case the Divine was distracted at the moment someone was injured or found their life turned upside-down? And, if God loves us as we’re told, are They waiting for us to say something before acting with goodness and mercy?
We came up with no more answers on that drive than I have over the past months. But, that evening as my wife and I sat down to dinner we prayed for her uncle and her cousins knowing that we loved them and God did as well.
God of love, use my prayers to fill this world with love.