Prayer
We do not pray in vain – even when everything seems to be hopeless. We are truly concerned for salvation and bring our problems before God; He will bring us under His special care, so that – perhaps before we are even aware of it – miracles can happen, even when we had already given up. I remember the story of Jesus with the crippled man by the fountain: “When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’”
The question I always ask myself, especially after feeling that the whole world is on my shoulders crushing me, is: am I ready to be cured, am I ready to be made well. This usually occurs after several days or even weeks of feeling sorry for myself, whether it is a psychological or a physical problem.
Why do I, why do we, always do this to ourselves? We know that God is on our sides, yet we continue to torture our minds and bodies.
Why is it that we are not generally living by what is happening today. We spend too much time, too much effort, worrying or planning about tomorrow. We also waste time worrying about what has already passed. Neither one of these fruitless exercises calms our souls. By living fully in what is occurring today, understanding and accepting that god is with us, we can be much more relaxed, much more focused on living our lives to the fullest. For years, I beat myself up over the fact that I let my 85-year-old father die, rather than go against his religious beliefs. Now that I am 75, I think that I can truly understand how his faith was the one true concept that he could and did understand. To challenge that, to go against his will, would have been wrong.
This is another example of holding on to what has long happened, and cannot be changed.
God is on my side. I pray that I can remember to put aside any unfortunate things that happen and realize how special I am in God’s eyes.
Meditating to Heal 