A mom on the home team will pray that her son will win.
A mom on the visiting team will pray that her son will win.
Somebody's prayer will go unanswered.
Tomorrow, a farmer and a bride-to-be will wake up in the same midwest town.
The farmer will pray that God would send rain for his crops.
The bride-to-be will pray there be no rain on her wedding day.
Somebody's prayer will go unanswered.
Sunday, a Grandma will be at the Hospital in pain from her chemotherapy treatments.
Her Grandson will pray that God will heal her and let her move back home.
The Grandma will pray that God will take her home to be with Him.
Somebody's prayer will go unanswered.
Recently, I spent time in prayer.
I asked God to grant me patience.
Next, I prayed that God would give me a child now!
Sometimes, my prayers will go unanswered because they are contradicting with other prayers.
2 comments:
My wife and I are flipping a coin to determine who has to wash the dirty dishes.
I pray the coin falls heads up.
My wife prays the coin falls tails up.
Somebody's prayer will go unanswered.
Or perhaps both actually go unaswered? Is this really a situation that one prayer is literally and actively answered and one prayer is not?
Those prayers (like the praying football moms and the farmer and bride-to-be) are seeking something that, at the end of the day, has a 100% chance of being "answered." In each instance, the thing for which each person prayed either is or is not going to happen. It's a closed set of possible outcomes. Either it rains or it doesn't. One team wins, one team loses. The coin either falls heads or tails.
Is it helpful/healthy/appropriate, not to mention theologically accurate or spiritually mature, to consider the prayer in those instances either "answered" or "unanswered." Especially with regard to the naturally-occuring phenomena (i.e., the weather and the coin flip), I'm struggling to view the outcome as a result of a particular divine intervention.
Perhaps that's my theological misstep or spiritual immaturity at work, though.
Well, I think Derry's right that from a strictly phenomenological perspective, one of the two prayers will indeed be answered. Whether that answer is the result of a specific divine action is another question, one in which I don't think we could possibly ever know the answer in any specific case, barring direct divine revelation of some sort.
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