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Reflections on answered prayer

Janet Panning

A seminary student was kidnapped at gunpoint. When he didn’t arrive home on time, his wife started the campus praying. Around midnight, his captors told him to get up and start walking without turning around. Prepared to be shot in the back, he was amazed to find that they had released him. His wife attributes his release to prayer.

“God spared us.” “God answered our prayers.” “God kept us safe.” This is the refrain of believers everywhere who have had their lives spared in the midst of sickness, war, car accidents, earthquakes and tornadoes.

At the same time, I hear other believers make angry comments when a Christian rejoices in God’s intervention: “How can you say that God spared you? If that is true, then you are implying that God chose not to save those who died. Are you saying God didn’t bother to help those who lost children, that God didn’t find worthy of intervention the faith of those who are horribly damaged? How dare you claim that God answered your prayers, at the expense of the ones who perished!”

With this line of reasoning, we feel less able to pray. We feel partly to blame if we are spared and others die. We feel guilty at the great contradiction of our faith – a good and loving God who spares us and lets others suffer and die.

Oddly enough, this line of reasoning shows up most frequently among those who are not in the midst of kidnapping, famine, war, accidents or storms. I’ve seen it most often among compassionate persons who are, from a position of relative security and comfort, trying to reach out to others who are suffering.

The good news is that God’s voice through prayer is not a scarce commodity. If God spares us, it does not mean that God was not with those who were not spared. If we suffer, it does not mean that we have not prayed enough, or that God cares more about those not suffering.

We are called to pray, to beg, to offer the prayers of our heart, to search for God in the reality we find ourselves in. We are called to pray without ceasing.

God promises to be with us in the midst of suffering. Our prayers of anguish and our prayers for help acknowledge that God is with us and that God is in control. If God allows us to be released from suffering, we rejoice and give thanks. If God allows us to continue to suffer, we continue to trust and pray.

This article was issued Jan. 22, 1999 as a Mennonite Central Committee news release. Janet Panning and her husband Steve are former MCC Jamaica country co-representatives.

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Last modified December 11, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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