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Does prayer work? Or is it merely the placebo effect when things get better?Your mind convinces itself you are feeling better and you do. Your brain stimulates the immune system, helps fight off infection or repress cancer and none of it is owing to supernatural forces at work.

All that doesn't explain how someone you pray for, who doesn't know you're praying for him, recovers from mortal illness. Studies show that people prayed for by strangers, unaware of such prayers, have significantly better outcomes than the control group, including survival! Of course none of this will dissuade die-hard atheists who see only matter as being real and chance the only 'force' operating on us. But then until Newton nobody had conceived of gravity as an actual force pervading the Universe. We are learning more and more about how strange the Universe really is, so might it not be naive to dismiss out of hand metaphysical forces operating as well? [This either/or mentality extends to those believers who pray before EVERY decision, asking God what car to buy, which restaurant tonight; I mean, even the good Lord must get bored sometime!]
 
But for those who believe in God as a Person, someone who RELATES to us, and understand real faith is a mix of reason, intuition and mystery, never to be confused with certainty (the fatal flaw of both atheists and fundamentalists), then faith serves as a resource, to be called upon in hope or desperation (or both) but NEVER TO BE ASSUMED! After all, if God is a Person, and we are made in His image, then He would no more want to be taken for granted than we do. When a prayer is answered, perhaps it's just a matter of timing: was it pure luck the speeding truck did not hit your car broadside as your wife, still upset over a fight with her sister, pulls out in front of him? You saw him coming  from the passenger seat, maybe before she did, and time seemed to slow down as they say it does in accidents--yet the truck did not hit you, did not swerve, must have hit his brakes but it didn't seem that way. And for a moment everything seemed so real that it all seemed unreal, much like being in a sudden dream. Was it just good luck, a skillful driver in the truck? Perhaps, but you think, My God, that was so close! And nothing happened-- and you thank Him-- and no, you don't know that He was involved, but you don't know that He wasn't either. But you do know that you pray every day for the safety of those you love--and your own. So you thank God.
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