Not the last word on prayer, but mine--for a while

One of the people I've been praying for lately died last night. She'd been very ill, and her passing was peaceful. It was, in fact, all she'd wanted--she died at home surrounded by family. I hadn't been praying for her to get well. Should I have? I prayed instead that she would die peacefully, that she would be able to let go, that her family would know her love and that she would be surrounded by God's love.

I don't know much about intercessory prayer. Some years ago I heard Jack Spong speak, and in the course of a much longer talk he mentioned that in his first wife's long battle with cancer many people had prayed for her. Of course, he and his wife welcomed the prayers. But then, he said, he began to feel badly when they would say, "she's lived this long because so many people are praying for her..." or something of the sort. He began to wonder if they really believed that his wife deserved life more than someone else, equally sick, who was less known to praying people, who wasn't, therefore, surrounded by prayer as she was. He said he wasn't sure he wanted to believe in a God who responded to prayers like that, who just listened to the loudest or most persistent prayers, or who somehow kept score and responded to those who had the most prayers.

His wife finally died of her illness, surrounded by prayers. In the end, he said, he simply believed that prayer was "the God-stuff in me responding to the God-stuff in you"--that is, it's a way we connect with another across time and space, perhaps even without their knowing, in love and care. For now, that's enough for me.

So now I'm praying for those who live on, who have said good-bye to a loved one and have to go on with that hole in their lives. I know they will--they have plenty of love and strength and compassion--but it will be hard and so I'm praying for them, and in part it's for me, so I can connect with them and their love.