Prayer Support
If you would like our prayer team to pray for a need you have please send an e-mail to prayer@etz-chayim.org
Is Prayer Answered? by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Is prayer answered? If God is changeless, how can we
change Him by what we say? Even discounting this, why do we need to
articulate our requests? Surely God, who sees the heart, knows our
wishes even before we do, without our having to put them into words.
What we wish to happen is either right or wrong in the eyes of God. If
it is right, God will bring it about even if we do not pray. If it is
wrong, God will not bring it about even if we do. So why pray?
The classic Jewish answer is simple but profound. Without a vessel to
contain a blessing, there can be no blessing. If we have no receptacle
to catch the rain, the rain may fall, but we will have none to drink. If
we have no radio receiver, the sound waves will flow, but we will be
unable to convert them into sound. God’s blessings flow continuously,
but unless we make ourselves into a vessel for them, they will flow
elsewhere. Prayer is the act of turning ourselves into a vehicle for
the Divine.
Speaking from personal experience, and from many encounters with people
for whom prayer was a lifeline, I know that our prayers are answered:
not always in the way we expected, not always as quickly as we
hoped, but prayer is never in vain. Sometimes the answer is,
“No.” If granting a request would do us or others harm, God will not
grant it. But “No” is also an answer, and when God decides that
something I have prayed for should not come to pass, then I pray for the
wisdom to understand why. That too is part of spiritual growth: to
accept graciously what we cannot or should not change. Nor is prayer a
substitute for human effort: on the contrary, prayer is one of the most
powerful sources of energy for human effort. God gives us the strength
to achieve what we need to achieve, and to do what we were placed on
earth to do.
Prayer changes the world because it changes us. At its height, it
is a profoundly transformative experience. If we have truly prayed, we
come in the course of time to know that the world was made, and we were
made, for a purpose; that God, though immeasurably vast, is also
intensely close; that “though my father and mother may reject me, God
will gather me in”; that God is with us in our efforts, and that we do
not labor in vain. We know, too, that we are part of the community of
faith, and with us are four thousand years of history and the prayers
and hopes of those who carne before us. However far we feel from God, He
is there behind us, and all we have to do is turn to face Him. Faith is
born and lives in prayer, and faith is the antidote to fear: “The LORD
is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid?”
Excerpted from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ commentary in the new The
Koren Sacks Siddur, recently published by Koren Publishers Jerusalem
Ltd and OU Press, available for online purchase at
http://www.ou.org/korensiddur
Learn more about the siddur at
http://www.korensiddur.com
ETZ CHAYIM-TREE OF LIFE MESSIANIC CONGREGATION
of Las Cruces
PO Box 467, Organ, NM 88052
866-874-7250 (toll free) FAX: 866-800-2390
TREE OF LIFE MESSIANIC MINISTRIES
Last
Updated
05 April, 2010