The Power of Prayer?

Photo: Adolf Ott, commander of death squads in the Einsatzgruppen (see link below for more on this) that executed (murdered) tens of thousands of Jews and gypsies for the Third Reich. Most of them were probably praying when they died. Ott died too. Eventually. His death sentence was commuted to life in prision and he was released, a free man, in 1958.

Doesn’t anybody besides me get tired of all the unanswered prayers in the world? The latest is the miners deaths in West (By God) Virginia. I don’t know how they “knew” that 4 were possibly still alive, but thousands of hours of prayer were poured out to see that the 4 got found and rescued. They were found. Dead. What happened to the prayer? One Pope or another has been praying for peace for hundreds of years and guess what? No peace. People pray that their children come back from Iraq and Afghanistan alive, but not all do. People pray for gazillions of things that never happen.
And, people pray for recovery AFTER disaster. Wouldn’t it be easier for a god to simply prevent the disaster? Look at Haiti. Two hundred thousand dead, mostly innocent of major transgression so the “god punished them” line won’t work. How about the “god wanted them with him” line? Dying in your sleep seems better to me than being crushed or dehydrated to death in a collapsed building. Couldn’t god have “taken” the trapped and crushed faster?
What is the conclusion? A loving god? I don’t think so. A caring god? I don’t think so. An absent god? Makes more sense than the first two. No god at all? Makes more sense than all the rest.
It seems to me that folks pray for bad things not to happen and then pray for deliverance when they do. They pray for good things to happen too, but when they don’t happen? You guessed it: god’s will.
When somebody gets really hurt, dangerously near death kind of hurt it’s “thank god they didn’t die”. Now pray for recovery. If recovery occurs “thank god for the recovery.” If recovery doesn’t happen it’s “gods will”. Huh? If the dude was going to die, why not quick and easy in the first place? If they are going to recover, why the near death in the first place? “God is testing us” or “god works in mysterious ways” or “we can’t know the mind of god” and other such nonsense.
Pray all you like, and if you believe in the power of prayer you may actually feel better about the world. Personally, I don’t think anyone answers the call at the other end of the line.

Einsatzgruppen link: WARNING!! GRAPHIC PHOTOS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF MURDER:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen