Thinking about prayer.  For as long as I can remember, at prayer meetings or at the end of classes, when it was time to pray, the requests would be taken and the majority of the requests would be, prayer for pain and sickness. (but if they were to young for pain and sickness, the requests were school and studies or someone else’s pain and sickness)

   This has always bothered me.  I don’t think that when God invited us to pray, He invited us for a check up and a prescription.  BUT I never would speak up and say, “don’t pray for that, isn’t there something more important.” Because, I thought, “if I or my family gets sick, won’t I ask for prayer too.”  I also don’t think our pain and sickness is outside of the scope of God’s care or ability, but sometimes, and I think you will agree, that the ONLY thing we pray for at prayer meetings is pain and sickness. 

   I think there are a couple reasons. (more than I’ve listed I’m sure)

1. 1.When a prayer request is asked for, maybe we hear it as, “what do you need.”  If we are feeling pain and have a sickness, well, what we need is for this pain and sickness to be gone.  It is the primary “felt need.”  The trouble comes in the fact that we will rarely be without pain and sickness, and if we keep waiting for our bodies to be without pain and sickness we will never get around to praying for anything else.
   

2. 2.It is easy.  It doesn’t require an explanation or exploration of the soul.  It is non-committal, “if I talk about this pain in my back, or the cough I’ve had for three weeks, I give a request but don’t have to show my soul, while at the same time eliciting sympathy.” 
   

My thought that has lead to this unloading of thoughts is;  If sin and spiritual trials had the same sharp pain as an impinged nerve, or was ever present like a persistent cough, then our prayers would change dramatically.

“I’ve had this splitting anger toward my kids this week, it starts in the middle of my forehead and moves down to my lower back and I just can’t get away from it.”  “I’ve had a lust fever for 20 days, every time I open my eyes I’m not seeing women the way I should be, and the medicine just isn’t working.”

  Again, I think our physical needs are okay to pray for, but maybe along with those physical needs are our spiritual responses to the pain and the trouble.  When Cayden or Emilee is in the ER struggling to breath I am praying for their life, but my soul is wrestling with how to respond to God.  In hope or hopelessness, in trust or distrust, in loyalty or rejection. 

   When I sit around a table with guys, I would be very surprised (and pleased) if the only thing that concerned our walk with God was our cursed body’s aches and pains.  To me that is like praying for water to not be wet.

   Well I guess I effectively laid out a chain of incomplete thoughts, but I hope can catch a bit of what I’m gunning at.