Practical prayer to the rescue

Jesus Christ was the master of practical, successful prayer and demonstrated how great an impact for good his form of prayer could have on the environment. He stilled storms, fed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and a few fish. He even healed physical ailments which may have been caused by the environmental conditions of the period. In fact, wherever he encountered a crisis, his response was to heal it!

As one who employs prayer as a means of healing disease and disaster of all descriptions, I maintain, as the basis of my prayer, that God, who is the source of all love, does not send environmental or any catastrophe. Prayer may be the most underutilized and unrecognized tool for bettering our environment. In teaching his followers how to pray effectively, Jesus laid great emphasis on one's thoughts, motives and aspirations. In other words, he saw a connection between the physical world around us and our thinking. I'm not talking merely of a mind/body connection. I'm talking about a degree of spirituality in thought which governs physical effects as practical proof of our innate connection with the divine. I don't mean to make this overly simplistic. The global causes that lay behind environmental issues are complex. But, Christian Scientists, and others who think metaphysically, see the cause of any problem as going way beyond physicality.

Are we treating environmental issues the way Jesus would - through practical prayer where mentality impacts our surroundings? To me, as with many issues I am called on to pray about as a Christian Science practitioner, solutions begin with detecting and addressing the mentality behind the surface issue. After all, don't all changes in our world begin with changes in thinking? The world has come through many periods of progress in its history--periods that have established higher standards of civil rights, women's rights and human rights. I feel that this age could be remembered as a time of progress in many areas, including environmental rights. To do this, let's make sure we don't underestimate the impact that practical prayer can have on an environment that needs so much help.

By Phil Davis  |  June 4, 2010; 4:36 PM ET Save & Share:                 
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