God can not be surprised; He already knows everything to include the future.

Prayer is the greatest act of power in the world, not because it changes things, but because it changes us, our attitudes, convictions, thoughts, convictions, feelings, words, and actions.

DON’T EXPECT THINGS TO WORK OUT

JUST BECAUSE YOU PRAYED SINCERELY

Late one evening, my phone rang. Rabbi, my mother is going in for an operation tomorrow. Would you say a prayer for her? Can I really believe that the words I recite will have an influence on the recovery of a woman I have never met, a woman who doesn’t know of my existence, let alone my prayers on her behalf? More than that, can I believe in a God who has the power to cure a sick person but will exercise that power only if we recite the right words at the right time in the right language, a God who will let a person die if, in our confusion, we forget the prayer or get the words wrong?

The problem of prayer in relation to God as we have come to understand Him is a difficult one and will be dealt with at length later. But prayers for healing are in a separate category, and will be discussed here, in the context of considering a God who does not reward or punish or intervene to set aside the working of nature.

Oh God, please cure her! is not really a request, much as it sounds like one. It is a cry of pain, an expression of helplessness, of the finiteness of human wisdom in the face of illness and death. God answers such a cry not by sending a miraculous recovery, but by giving the one who cries out enough strength to bear his burden, however heavy it may become. I usually respond to requests like the one made of me that evening by saying, I’ll pray for your mother’s recovery, so that you and she will know that the community is with you and hopes things turn out well for you. And I hope that you will pray too. Not just for a recovery. Pray that you’ll be strong enough and your mother and all your family will be strong enough to take whatever comes, without being broken it. Pray that, if things turn out well, you’ll remember to be grateful and appreciate life and health more. Pray that you find comfort in the knowledge that skilled, dedicated doctors and nurses-— strangers to you-—are working to make her better, because God has given them minds to understand and hearts to care about the pain of a fellow human being. If you can find comfort in the fact that you have done everything you could do and the doctors are doing everything they can, if you are strong enough to accept the worst and be humbly grateful for anything better, then your prayers will have been answered."

In the time of the Mishnah (compiled around the year 200 C.E.), it was already forbidden for a man who saw smoke coming from a burning building to pray, God, let it not me my house! Not only is it a distortion of religion to implore God to cause someone else’s house to burn rather than yours, but such prayer is a defiance of logic and reality. A certain house was already aflame, and it was already too late for God, or any other power, to decide which house it was.

Similarly-—from the standpoint of strict logic--when one is waiting for the results of a medical examination, it makes no sense to pray, Let it turn out to be something not too serious. The condition either already exists or does not exist and will not disappear through the intervention of our words. If things could be changed thusly, no one would ever fall seriously ill, for every person would recite such a prayer with the utmost sincerity.

Yet we do utter such prayers at such times, almost instinctively, and as long as we don’t seriously expect them to alter the course of a patient’s health, they may be desirable as an outlet for our strong emotions and concerns.

What prayer can we offer when we or someone close to us is ill? First, our prayers can affirm the essential goodness and helpfulness of the world. For this is not a fatalistic world where certain courses are decreed beforehand and tragedy is the foreordained fate of certain men. Things may work out well; they very often do. The sun shines more often than not. Most people recover from most illnesses; most operations are successful; most children survive the dangers of their vulnerable years, grow to adulthood, marry and have children of their own. In many cases, the percentages will be heavily on our side; in almost all others, at least the possibility of a happy ending will be there.

Secondly, in our prayers, we should be grateful for the God--given skills and dedication of those who try to help us in our illness. God had given men minds sharp enough to unravel the mysteries of illness and track down their cures. He has given them souls so great that doctors and nurses, who were virtual strangers to us until now, are willing to sacrifice their comfort, perhaps even risk their own health-—in a way for which no fee can really compensate --in order to help us. Our prayers would express gratitude not only for the existence of medical science, but for its embodiment in these particular men and women.

Beyond this, there is the consideration that our prayers for another’s health and recovery will come to that person’s attention and strengthen his spirits with the knowledge that others are concerned about him.

And lastly, no prayer in time of illness would be complete without articulating the hope that, should things go badly, should we come out of the ordeal crippled or bereaved, we will find within ourselves the strength to live with that result too. We all know examples of people whose experience of pain and illness, their own or a relative’s has left them badly hurt. But they were able, nevertheless, to call upon God for the strength to go on living in His world and believing in it. We might pray that, should we find ourselves in such a position, we will be capable of showing the same strength and faith.

This, of course, is the message of the Mourner’s Kaddish, which Judaism bids the bereaved recite. We have no prayers for the dead in Judaism - we have prayers for the living, in which those who have been hurt by life proclaim publicly that they can still believe in God and in His world.

  When Children Ask About God, page 102