The Prayer Placebo

The Prayer Placebo

We, the group gathered here regularly and purposefully offer prayers on behalf of others. Do we have a special connection to the source of healing? I don't think so. We are facilitators, that's all. The one for whom the prayer is offered must have - must be helped to have - the same connection; or how will that one receive the blessing?

As Christians we believe that there is but one mediator or intercessor, We are aware, that we pray through the Christ within and that we and the one for whom we supplicate, are one with the Father. We believe that, having come with their weariness and burdens; the promise of respite and restoration will be honoured. When, in the stillness of our communion, in the awareness of the presence of God, we offer our prayer for our brother; we know that in the same stillness and presence, our brother will hear the answer.

There is hardly anyone we know that is free from a sense of lackl, inner conflict or strained relationships. Corrosive emotions are stirred. Fear, hate, rancour are known to be the psycho-somatic causes of poor health; pain even death. Physicians treat the bodily symptoms but true healing requires that the whole man: body, mind and spirit must be made whole again.

The power to heal is in God, reached in prayer, practiced in absolute honesty and sacrifice of personal will. Our prayer should be a communication with the infinite, where time or space - distance - is not relevant. Our prayer requires compassionate intention; more than a desire! We can desire what we consider impossible but we cannot intend to do what we consider impossible. Our prayer must be love. An ambivalent believer, even an atheist may not accept your concept of God - but he will not reject love!

Our prayer initiates the process but still the act is not complete. The thirsty must take and drink. The supply is inexhaustible but unless it thankfully received and accepted, no relief will occur. No amount of medicine will bring relief unless the patient takes the dose! The final act of completed prayer is to receive (accept the desired good and act from the knowledge that it is now so.)

Is prayer a medical taboo? Modern medicine hitherto has preferred drugs, surgery and

high technology and ignores - even excludes - healing's spiritual components. Science demands empirical evidence and replicable demonstrations before a treatment can be accepted as an effective intervention to restore human bodily health - even if that treatment is only palliative or of benefit in a localized area of the body. The dis-ease of emotional anguish is often not even diagnosed, let alone treated. Spirituality has been considered as irrelevant to health!

In recent times alternative therapies advocate a holistic, mind, body and spirit approach

And prayer is again being recognized as a healing modality.

There is a considerable and growing body of research documenting

the power of prayer to affect healing. The research,