282. Does God Intervene
I’ll say at the very beginning that I am not satisfied or pleased with this days’ writing. It’s a hard question, and there is no easy answer, but I can’t avoid all the hard questions. Does God intervene? I believe that most of the time God does not intervene in the world.
I think that the world is set up so there are natural consequences when a certain thing happens. For instance I think that as a society we can become aware that a certain species is near extinction. We pass laws to mark that species as endangered. We start working on providing favorable conditions for that species and slowly, slowly the species begins to move away from that endangered category.
Cause and effect. There are many things in the world that the human species has messed up and likewise there are instances where with intention and with hard work, the effect that was a natural one can be reversed.
I wonder about energy. And perhaps about the energy of prayer. I think it is possible that we haven’t begun to use the kind of energy that we have at our disposal. Years ago a friend of mine in California had a daughter who was undergoing surgery and the doctors were saying she might not survive it and it might not be a solution. Her father called people all across the country. He knew the surgery was scheduled for 8:30 in the morning. He gave each person he talked to the appropriate time depending on their time zone and asked them to take thirty minutes wherever they were and pray for this child.
My time was 11:30 and I was at work on that weekday but I had arranged to be able to go into an empty office for those thirty minutes. I did that and I prayed—I sent healing energy to that doctor and to that child. I was joined by many others. The child survived and the operation was a success. I think that is an example of a skilled doctor and the focused energy of a lot of people.
I can’t get to the real answer of the situation just above. But I have to do my part—to reverse the messes that are in the world, to accept responsibility for not contributing to those messes. And I need to not give up on the power of prayer. Ultimately I say mystery.
