I recently recovered from a bout of high fever and flu. A friend of mine told me to give thanks to God for an answered prayer. The truth is I didn't pray for healing during my illness. When my fever was very high, I vaguely recall reciting the Kyries only because it is repetitive and possibly I was bored but I didn't pray.
Do modern people still expect to die from a fever? If 99.99% of the time, we have total recovery from a bout of fever, do we still attribute the recovery to answered prayers, if prayers had been said in the first place? In the unlikely event that one dies from a fever, one wouldn't be in the position to talk about unanswered prayers. More likely, stories will abound about answered prayers only because most of the time, the outcome appears very much as if prayers had been answered.
I think this best illustrates our lives: We live in a world with minor earthquakes all the time. Those within a five-mile radius to the epicentre of the earthquake will be utterly destroyed. Those outside of the five-mile radius survive. Most of the time, we are too far from the epicentre. So we live to tell the tale of answered prayers. Sometimes, we are close to the epicentre and we don't live to tell tales of unanswered prayers. We just die. Sometimes we are far enough to the epicentre and we survive the earthquake but we sustain injuries. We're still able to tell tales of answered prayers. Dum spiro, spero.
There'll come a time when we'll be too close to the epicentre of an earthquake. That's when our tales of answered prayers will come to an end. Others will continue to tell their own amazing tales in their own lives until they too meet their end.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment