Earlier in the week I was having a conversation with a friend about, inter alia, prayer. I was thinking about prayer again today after coming across an article, "Teach me to pray," by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, a young Lutheran pastor in North Carolina. The central question raised by the command to pray is whether prayer actually changes God. I suppose my answer to this would be that I don't know. Scripture portrays God, especially in the Old Testament, as constantly changing his mind, as, for example, in relenting from a previously threatened punishment. This happened during the forty years of wandering in the desert. It happened in the book of Jonah when God called off the destruction of Nineveh. It happened when King Hezekiah talked God into extending his life by another fifteen years.

Hinlicky says she is uncomfortable with the notion of God changing his mind and dismisses this--rather too glibly in my view--as a reason for prayer. But prayer is efficacious. My wife and I found this out for ourselves when our daughter Theresa was in hospital for just over ten weeks after her premature birth. Around that same time I became aware of studies indicating that prayer has a definite effect on bringing about the recovery from illness, even if the patients are unaware of being prayed for. I must admit to being put off initially by the notion that God's acts in his world can be subjected to scientific scrutiny, but perhaps it's not essentially different from studying photosynthesis, whose very functioning is due to God's grace manifested in creation.

In any event, Theresa eventually came home and, despite a less than even chance of her suffering no ill effects from her early entry into the world, she is doing remarkably well. More than 300 people (that I'm aware of) were praying for her during this time. A number of people--quite independently of each other--have dubbed her a "miracle baby," and I believe it. Here is her story, for those interested.