“But once you understand the power of prayer, you will be able to heal many quarrels in the true way; probably without speaking at all.” (Emmet Fox)
I can’t heal anything or anyone or any situation. God is the healer, not me. I cannot usurp the power of God.
I might pray, and God might heal. But _I_ cannot and do not heal. I have tried this. Not only do such attempts consistently fail in terms of prayed-for outcome, but the endeavour encourages me in two cautionable ways: it encourages the conceit of power, and it encourages the conceit of Knowing God’s Will For Others. It also encourages inappropriate hope: some of the people who I have known who have died young were prayed over continually by many people of considerable and genuine spiritual strength. The illusion of control, entertained in the form of action-driven hope, has an awful price when the illusion shatters.
What if God does not want to heal someone’s quarrel?
What if God wants the people to learn their lesson the hard way?
What if God wants it to play out?
The fact that anything is happening is arguably a sign that it is God’s will.
Am I to say God is wrong?
Sometimes people pray publicly for peace, as though the fact of strife is terrible mistake, people ought not to have been given the power of choice to exercise it in a particular way, and God is as disgruntled at we are with the _inconvenient_ war we are presently occupied with (whilst one blithely ignores wars in remote places with complicated names or where one is too ignorant to make a peremptory judgement about which side is ‘right’, to buy the appropriate lapel pin or rucksack badge). I’ve wasted a lot of time doing this, and my motives might have been good in some respect, but there was a lot of hubris blended into the mix.
I have absolutely no desire any more to meddle in the world or in others’ affairs.
The Big Book is very good on this: on page 118 it describes how we change the world through our own example, but the world will on change on its schedule, not ours.
What I do need to meddle in, however, is me. That’s where my work is.
The real reason why it’s so tempting to try to heal others or pray for others is that it does not cost me anything at all. I can think I’ve done A Very Good Thing, but I haven’t had to leave my armchair.
It does not require me to change, to give up a vice, to cultivate a virtue, to work hard, to experience short-term pain, to experience uncertainty.
And if the thing works out I can claim the credit; and if it doesn’t I can cite the Unfathomable Ways of God.
Now, the quarrel I can heal is not someone else’s but my own.
I can stop quarrelling with someone the moment I decide that peace is more important to me than the object of the quarrel.
And I can pray, privately, for the ultimate welfare of others (without stipulating to God that He intervene and get in between cause and effect or decision and consequence), but this is not to wave a magic wand over others in an ethereal realm or to signal my own peace-loving virtue: this is to neutralise my own hostilities; whilst I’m praying for the welfare of others, I can’t very well hold a grievance against them. It aligns me with God’s presumed ultimate goal of the good of all, and I leave the prayer as simple as that: no outlining of particular outcomes or the path to that ultimate goal.
So, as usual, I thoroughly agree with Mr Fox when it comes to what action to take, but I take a slightly different route up the hill.
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