The Moving Power of Prayer

There likely isn’t much greater loneliness than the loneliness of a man who cannot find comfort and assurance and help outside himself. And there likely isn’t much greater loneliness than the loneliness of a man who has never found effectively in his life the greater and moving power of prayer.

Prayer is an incalculable source of strength, of peace, of courage, of comfort—the comfort that comes with knowing that there is a Source of help, wisdom, guidance, outside ourselves, outside human sources. Men seem to rise to greatness when most sincerely humble, and never more sincerely humble do they seem than approaching their Father in prayer, in acknowledging the debts, the favors, the blessing of past and present. We are moved by the thought of patriots in prayer and by the prayerful approach to public problems.

It is proper to pray for all men, even our enemies. It is proper to pray that the spirit of peace may move the hearts even of those who intend no piece, to pray that their ill intend may somehow be softened.

Some of the most sublime moments of life are the moments when prayers are remembered: the prayer of a child at a mother’s knee, or the prayer of loved ones waiting; the prayer in time of illness, of sorrow, and in the problems and decisions of each day—the prayer of gratitude to God.

It would be presumptuous to say that we understand the process of prayer, the means by which a man, in his need, can send his spoken or unspoken thoughts or the burden of his most sincere desires to a Source whence cometh help. But the unseen forces that we are already aware of should give us faith in other unseen forces.

“We don’t know the millionth part of 1 per cent about anything,” said Thomas A. Edison. “We don’t know what water is. We don’t know what electricity is. We don’t know what heat is. We have a lot of hypotheses about these things, but that is all. But we do not let our ignorance about these things deprive us of their use.” Nor should we let our lack of knowledge concerning the means and channels through which prayer moves deprive us of its use. Considering all the unseen forces there are, it is but a short step of faith to accept the fact that our Father in his infinite wisdom can and does know the needs of us all, our attitudes, our pleas and petitions, the crying out of the human heart, and does not leave those pleas unheard or unheeded.