Last Friday evening, WildFire went to SickKids Hospital… no, it was not due to a sudden injury or other health-related emergency. We went to pray.
A concerned grandmother had contacted Rodney a couple weeks ago, asking for prayer for her granddaughter who was at SickKids. Being born with a hole in her heart, she had gone in for surgery to get it fixed. Unfortunately, there had been some further complications and one of her lungs had collapsed. That too had been repaired and apart from that, and her name (which we’ll keep out for her privacy’s sake) was all that we knew.
Extra unfortunately, to this day we have not heard anything more from this family.
That, however, did not keep us from praying!
Before entering into the hospital, we sat together outside and prayed for her healing and for her family. We also prayed for our time at SickKids and that the Lord would lead and guide us and direct our steps to go to the places we needed to go. We prayed for the staff and the countless medical teams and professionals and all the students who work there and provide the best care possible to all of the children and families who enter. Even the people keeping the hospital clean! We prayed for them all
Ironically, and perhaps in a way that only the Lord’s good humour can enable, the one person we spoke with the most was the gentleman driving up and down the hallways cleaning the floors! But that’s a story for another time…
What I did want to encourage us all about is when we are praying and we’re tempted to believe that it is futile or that prayers are somehow not as powerful as they could be.
When we pray, our focus should never be on how powerful our prayers are but on how powerful the God who hears our prayers is.
Of course, when we pray in groups there is something exciting about how our faith can grow! When we hear others praying with us, we can feel especially encouraged. When we are praying for someone and we’re able to hold their hand or rest our hand on their shoulder, it can feel like there is an even stronger connection!
The BEST news about all of this, is that even when we pray on our own and from a distance, our God hears each and every one of our prayers and holds them close.
Consider these words of Jesus as you bring your prayers before God!
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 7:7-12