Currently reading: Miracles (C. S. Lewis)

Without a doubt, one of my favorite authors. Perhaps even my *favorite* author. Having read this once before, I'm coming back to it with a slightly older and (hopefully) wiser intellect, looking to see what new insights can be gained.

Some of my past favorite quotes include the following:

"All prayers are heard, though not all prayers are granted. We must not picture destiny as a film unrolling for the most part on its own, but in which our prayers are sometimes allowed to insert additional items. On the contrary: what the film displays to us as it unrolls already contains the results of our prayers and of all our other acts. There is no question whether an event has happened because of your prayer. When the event you prayed for occurs your prayer has always contributed to it. When the opposite event occurs your prayer has never been ignored; it has been considered and refused, for your ultimate good and the good of the whole universe. (For example, because it is better for you and for everyone else in the long run that other people, including wicked ones, should exercise free will than that you should be protected from cruelty or treachery by turning the human race into automata.) But this is, and must remain, a matter of faith. You will, I think, only deceive yourself by trying to find special evidence for it in some cases more than in others."

This is actually a subject that has been occupying my mind a lot recently. The text comes from one of the appendices of the book, rather than the book proper, and as such should be excused from the fact that it doesn't contain Lewis' arguments in support of Miracles as found in the greater portion of the book. Admittedly, the book has many memorable quotes and points made by Lewis. As stated, the book is Lewis making arguments in support of Miracles. Sometimes his style and his intellect are so deep that I have a hard time completely grasping what he is trying to say, but in this case I feel that I have enough of a grasp that I can apply what he is saying in this passage to what is going on in my own life.

I remember when I was a teenager being at a restaurant with my youth group in pretty bad weather. It was raining, windy, you know, the perfect recipe for something bad to happen. Then we heard the tornado sirens going off. I was, naturally, kind of worried, and I suggested to one of the youth group members that we should pray about it. Her response was: "That won't work. Prayer doesn't work." My reaction to that was pretty much just shock. I think that was probably the first time in my life that I heard another Christian doubting the efficacy of prayer.

I think still to some degree I have that same feeling any time I hear a fellow Christian tossing aside prayer as something less than it is. It's simply part of my makeup to assume that prayer is effective, and certainly heard, whether the answer is what I want or not.

All that being said, let's take a look at this passage (one of my favorites) from the book. Lewis is making the point that all prayer is heard, and that it carries weight whether we perceive that or not. He argues that we should never stop praying simply because we think it's ineffective, or because we're not getting what we ask for. Prayer is a matter of faith, just as trusting in a good, loving, perfect God is a matter of faith.

I am very much looking forward to this reading of an old favorite, and seeing what new things God has to show me through it.