Last Sunday, there was rain all over the Bay Area. It was not enough to break the current drought but it was a much welcome break from the current severe dry spell the region is going through. Many people prayed for the rains. Some native indigenous people did their traditional rain dance. And the rains we were all fervently wishing for indeed came pouring down on Sunday morning.
Did the rains come because of our prayers and our faith? Or, was this all part of nature unfolding? There is enough evidence to show that thoughts and desires can influence events; that what we are given the power to imagine, we are also given the power to make happen. It does not happen all the time for it does require a great deal of faith and desire but indeed it can happen the way we pray for and believe in.
So the rains did come last Sunday and they may or may not have been due to all our prayers and petitions. But I have great difficulty believing it was partly my faith that helped. I pray for something. It happens. I often just shrug it off saying that it was bound to happen anyway. Faith, I am beginning to truly understand, is not only the belief and trust one must have in the beginning when one is hoping or wishing for something or someone to happen or come, but also the humility and the gratitude when one has received or come upon what one has been wishing or hoping for.
“Lord, I believe. Heal me of my unbelief.”
Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him,
turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who has touched my clothes?”
But his disciples said to him,
“You see how the crowd is pressing upon you,
and yet you ask, Who touched me?”
And he looked around to see who had done it.
The woman, realizing what had happened to her,
approached in fear and trembling.
She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.
He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.
Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”
Mark 5:21-34