Linda was having a test - a bone scan - and because she is naturally friendly and extroverted, she visited with the technician, a woman.
The technician told Linda about an extraordinary experience that has affected her entire family. Her grandson had a terrible fall down two flights of stairs, and was in a coma for several months. When he awakened from the coma, his mother told him:
"We were all praying for you."
"I know," the boy replied.
"But - how did you know?" his mother asked, amazed.
"Because, while I was in the coma, I saw the prayers. They were all around me, like streaming points of light."
This true story reminds me of what my brother-in-law Richard, my sister Donna's husband, told us after his recovery from a serious, life-threatening illness.
"We were all praying for you," our family told him. We knew that his Church (he is a Baptist minster) was praying for him as well.
Richard replied "I could feel all the prayers. They were lifting me up."
SEE prayers? FEEL prayers? These expressions don't surprise me. After all, God created us as a combination of body and soul, human and divine because we are created in God's Image. Jesus, Son of God, took on human flesh in an extraordinary combination of body and soul, human and divine. People knew Jesus was healing them because he touched them, spoke to them, used spit and clay even, so that power flowed through their entire persons. God manifests the power of prayer to us through our minds, our souls, our emotions, and our senses then, in a wholistic way.
How can prayers work? Because we are all united in a spiritually organic way with Christ and united as the Body of Christ. In fact, Jesus lives within each of us, and prays through us and with us in intercession to our mutual Father for the entire world. We've been told that we are the hands, feet, and voice of Christ - we are also called to voice the prayers of Christ. We can pray then that we'll always pray as Jesus wants us to pray, to pray for our heavenly Father's Will to be done in us, and for every one of us to be healed and helped in the ways and in the perfect timing that God wills. God wants to heal all of us, in areas of our bodies, souls and lives that only He knows about because He knows our true needs before we even know them.
Do you remember St. Paul's mysterious words - that we fill up what is lacking in the ministry of Christ? Remember Jesus' words that his followers will accomplish even more than he has done? How deeply God can reach into us to heal us - so deeply that the power of prayer can touch a comatose mind - because God acts through our prayers. Our prayers can lift up someone's heart to give them the emotional, physical, and spiritual endurance to keep fighting for wellness. Our prayers can help ready someone for death and eternity.
Our prayers don't change God. From all eternity, God knows what we will pray for and how He'll respond. Our prayers change us. They keep us working members of the Body of Christ, growing in empathy and compassion; every prayer we utter enlarges our hearts so that eventually our hearts will be the heart of Christ, containing the world, our friends and our enemies, and all of creation, which is also so wounded and in need of prayer.
We can trust God that our prayers make a difference, for perhaps one person at a time. Our prayers which move with the energy, speed, and brightness of streaming points of light. Our prayers, soft and warm, to be felt by another as a warm cloak of uplifting love. Our prayers, true gifts to others because they continue the ministry of Christ. Yes, prayer is powerful. And it works because we are the hands, the feet, the heart, the voice, the prayers of Christ.