Pages

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Prayer meetings

Here's a thought-experiment: should churches hold prayer meetings about the pandemic? The prayers would focus on two things:

i) Pray for folks they know who've contracted the illness

ii) Pray that God will mitigate the pandemic

Parishioners at higher risk (elderly, immunocompromised) would be excluded from attending the prayer meeting for their own protection.

1. There's the possibility of contracting infection at the prayer meeting.

2. There's the possibility that God will grant some of the prayer requests. Petitions he wouldn't grant if they hadn't been offered in corporate prayer. 

3. There's the possibility that God will decline to answer their prayers.

How should a Christian balance these considerations or "risk factors"? Should we take the position that it's too risky to give God the opportunity to answer petitionary prayers regarding the pandemic at a prayer meeting?

Even if someone contracts the illness at the prayer meeting, or even if God declines to answer the prayers, it still honors God to hold prayer meetings and practice corporate prayer. So we can still expect God to bless Christians who honor him, even if the blessings are ancillary to the prayer request. Or can we?

Are we duty-bound to forego prayer-meetings where we come together pray for a crisis because it's too risky to seek divine intervention for that situation in that setting? Is the paradox that the worse the situation, the less reason to seek God in corporate prayer? We should only turn to God in corporate prayer when we're safe? 

No comments:

Post a Comment