Prayer changes things

Towards the end of his life Albert Einstein was asked by fawning students what, following his momentous achievements, remained a suitable subject for research. “Prayer,” came the answer. “Somebody must find out about prayer.”

Kierkergaard suggested that the value of prayer lay not in its power to change external circumstances, but to change the pray-er. Choose a psalm at random and you are likely to see this in action. As the psalmist comes before God, his perspective changes. In the journey from “My God why have you forsaken me” to “may your hearts live forever!” is one of inner transformation only.

To say this is all that prayer does is to overlook a large part of the biblical story and the story of the Christian church since then.

This issue is not an attempt to unravel the questions about prayer that perplexed the mind of Einstein. Rather it is an acknowledgement that whatever its form or tradition, prayer is at the heart of every true mission activity.