Prayer WORKS!

Prayer can work, apparently. I know that I should have a solid testimony of prayer already, especially as a missionary, but I most humbly admit that I don't. I don't see how blessing a dinner of starch and fat helps us stay any healthier or stronger. I don't see how praying to find a WalMart that carries Sister Thomas' prescription so we don't have to keep driving all over creation and using our miles helps any location suddenly have a bottle of her medication suddenly appear on their shelves. We didn't find any. As far as I've been concerned, prayer is either vain repitition that may as well go unuttered, or it is a meditation to find answers from within that may not be answered anyway because the world functions on coincidence and if you're not in the right place at the right time, you're not going to catch one.

Then Coincidence Becomes Miracle.

It can't be a secret anymore that I am not having an easy go of this whole missionary thing. Sometimes all I see it as is the most bizarre instance of employment of my life. Other times I percieve it as a conspiracy in which I find myself to be one of the conspirators, and I can see the wisdom in others as they give us a wide berth. Then there are the rare moments where I don't understand why people aren't flocking to us to be taught. Despite my lack of faith in the power of prayer, there are times I find myself kneeling anyway. My head hangs heavily as my elbows rest on the floor, my hands grasped tightly towards the heavens in a desparate plea to a mystery.

CS Lewis writes about how miracles work in his book so aptly named 'Miracles'. If I were so free as to bring a personal selection with me, that book would be found on my modest missionary shelf. In it he talks about how miracles are made possible in spite of the odds of our knowledge, and I would have a quote, but I don't. So I recommend it as a bit of light reading. I remember, however, that he mentions miracles as being things that don't defy the odds of science, but as coincidences found and regarded in the right perceptions. So, as it happens, this should be kept in mind as I continue.

The other morning I had planned to read Alma chapter seven. It was there, it was the next chapter in sequence, and it was absolutely a coincidence that I was going to be reading it that day. I'd already jumped into the first verse before I remembered to open my study with prayer. Little did I realize that it was what I needed to read, and that it would mean a great deal to me in my quest for spiritual edification. There's very little to be called miraculous about Alma chapter seven being the subject of my study.

The difference was the fact that this time, as i just mentioned, I began my study with a very fervent, totally sincere prayer because I'm at the end of my rope here about believing in anything. After the previous day, there could be a televised broadcast made live of the second coming of Christ playing on the TV at an investigator's house, and I wouldn't have cared. Miracle isn't miracle without faith. I've seemed to have forgotten that. Miracle is transubstantiated coincidence. It's when you look at the things that were going to happen anyway and instead of shrugging your shoulders nonchalantly, you realize just how rare this coincidence was. You rejoice in the fact that you found the opportune moment.You see the blessing in being at the right place at the right time without putting forth any effort, and you feel the Spirit testify to you that this is how God would have it. This was absolutely planned out. It's been planned out because God, in all his omnipotent wisdom knew that you would make this choice and that you would need this answer.

Sometimes we don't get the miracle and it's just a coincidence. Sometimes we don't get lucky at all. I've read Alma chapter seven before. I'll read it again. It hasn't meant anything to me in the past, and I will forget its current significance to me in the future. Without praying sincerely, I would have read it anyway and probably gotten nothing out of it. But in this case, that coincidence turned into miracle and I found that everything I prayed for, every question I asked, and every murmur I murmured, was addressed in a way wherein I found myself being taught in a way that had to have meant that my Father in Heaven was aware of me and my needs.

Prayer worked. I testify of this. I testify that Jesus is the Christ, so named because he is the Saviour of the World. I testify that the Book of Mormon came forth of divine means and speaks from the dust to witness that this is so. It is another testament of that Gospel of the Messiah, a promise to our day that He lives and is aware of us in our afflictions and that we are not alone. He is united with the Father and the Spirit in purpose and that that purpose is to bring about the immortality and eternal life of man. The knowledge of this truth can come to us through personal revelation if we will only ask. There is no coincidence about it. There is no expression adequate enough to explain or convince.

Fact is coincidence.

Truth is miracle.