Some thoughts on thoughts and prayers...
Perhaps around social media you've seen a horrible tragedy followed by thoughts and prayers. Perhaps around social media you've seen some vitriol over the last comment of thoughts and prayers. Now obviously I'm not going to concentrate on thoughts, thoughts are likely a phrase reserved for non-Christians who don't understand the power of prayer or God's requirement to do so. So we pray for a shooting, bombing, natural disaster or the like just like we are commanded to do and then we are criticized. So what do you think, are thoughts and prayers enough? Yes and no. Let's start by looking at how they are enough. Let's use some orchestrated attack that has ended in tragedy. First and foremost, we can't pray for the deceased, they have been judged and if they were believers there's nothing we could pray for them that they would need. If they're injured or the family of the deceased then of course you pray. The first thing I always pray for, be it a mass murder or a simple heart attack is that those people's loved ones remember that God is still on His throne and I pray they turn to Him rather than away in anger. I can not fill someone with the Holy Spirit even if I'm doing the talking, only the Holy Spirit can do that, so I pray for an open heart. Now let's get back to the mass tragedy on the news that we've found quite upsetting, what can our prayers do, well recently there's been a rash of thoughts and prayers for different European cities and I'm blessed to have readers around the globe, but where I currently am is about 13 hours of flight time away from the nearest cities. So I can pray for quick recoveries of the survivors, skills for the police, medical staff, regular Samaritans who have offered their time and skills, and repentance of the attackers if they survived the ordeal. Just by chance I was about a half hour away from this recent Virginia shooting, now I have no skills in combat or medicine nor do I honestly believe the police on scene would have wanted me to rush past their work area to take control, but regardless I found out about it on the news and there was police tape and the victims were in surgery and workers were doing there best to get the area cleaned up and investigated as from what I understand it's a pretty tourist based area and they wanted to get the day back to normal as possible, so should I have had for instance the medical skills to treat those victims I'd still have had no business rushing into that local hospital and taking control of the surgery. All I can do is pray for those people's skills, thank the Lord for their services that keep those victims safe as well as us and for those in other parts of the world just like them. I can pray that we learn from this tragedy and that people with abilities for prevention can use this data to speed up response times and perhaps even discover preemptive measures. Now that said where I think frustration comes in is that those who do not understand prayer think that prayer is inaction. We talked to God and what has God ever done for an atheist? Christians may as well just be tying their shoes, at least something is getting accomplished. Well we know that God is all powerful. We know that if God was on His throne the day before this tragedy that God is on His throne through and after tragedy. The thing about tragedy is it tends to have an impact. People get motivated and it puts them where they need to be hopefully. We can't even begin to fathom what God uses events for as someone I know put it, down to the color of socks we grabbed out of our drawer that morning. That said there are also frustrations in lack of policy change. Here in America, we have the privilege of being represented by politicians, so prayers are good for Europe, truly, there's nothing Americans can do short of taking over another country without their request for help, but in America, if some trending tragedy occurs we can contact our representative and discuss why this tragedy may have been easily prevented or what we learned that could further help lawmaking or encourage standing policy. Now that said there are some politically charged stances and frankly misunderstandings that I won't get into here so be careful to do your homework. And that kind of leads into why prayer is all powerful but sometimes not enough. What do I mean by that? Imagine you were really sick and you prayed for a cure and you see a commercial on TV for a medicine treating your exact symptoms. That may be the answer to your prayer. But you don't go out and buy it and you continue to pray for a cure. Then a family member shows up with that exact medicine because they too saw that commercial and thought of you and so here they are but you don't take the medicine and continue to pray for a cure. Yes, God is all powerful and with no props at all can take care of whatever He wants done, but here He is providing for you, take the pill, pray then for the medicines effectiveness. Don't be lazy, God is not a butler. Should you feel a strong urge for crime prevention or emergency medicine, perhaps this is a calling, take some time to prayerfully consider if this is a path God is taking you down. Maybe there's other calls for service taking place inside you like some form of charity or help, missionary work for groups who seem to be missing God's Word or even some type of political office and/or service. I'm reminded of the Parable of the Talents(Matthew 25:14-30), talents were a form of money and a master demanded that his servants watch over his property while he was away, two of the men, entrusted with more money used their temporary wealth to create more and the one entrusted with the least decided to bury the money so that it would not be lost. He was punished for his laziness. God does not want you to be lazy, He has blessed you with a set of skills to serve Him and thus your neighbors, your neighbor has been blessed by the Lord to uniquely serve God and thus serve you, together you can grow the faith of others by using your skills as a community serving God to bring others to faith and accomplish God's Will. Look, tragedy and catastrophe are no stranger to the Christian and as a matter of fact the Bible shows that these things are serving His purposes and promises of the End Times. All we can do is pray God's Will is done, but yes, if there is something as simple as that pill next to the sick man, then take your medicine as that's likely the answer to your prayer.
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