The Power of Prayer

Prayer is not only worship; it is also an invisible emanation of man’s worshipping spirit ­ the most powerful form of energy that one can generate. If you make a habit of sincere prayer, your life will be very noticeably and profoundly enriched.

Prayer is a force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a doctor, I have seen men, after all therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Such occasions have been termed miracle. But a constant, quieter miracle takes place hourly in the hearts of men and women who have discovered that prayer supplies them with a steady flow of sustaining power in their daily lives.

Too many people regard prayer as a formalized routine of words, a refuge for weaklings or a childish petition for material things. Properly understood, prayer is a mature activity indispensable to the fullest development of personality. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete, harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakeable strength.

How does prayer fortify us with so much dynamic power? To answer this question (admittedly outside the jurisdiction of science) I must point out that all prayers demonstrate the same truth; human beings seek to augment their finite energy by addressing themselves to the infinite source of all power that spins the universe. We ask that a part of this power be apportioned to our needs. Even in asking, our human deficiencies are filled, and we arise strengthened and repaired.

In order really to mold personality, prayer must become a habit. One can pray everywhere; in the street, the office, the school, in the solitude of one’s own room, in a church. There is no prescribed posture, time or place. But it is meaningless to pray in the morning and to live like a barbarian the remainder of the day. True prayer is a way of life; the truest life is literally a way of prayer.

Today, lack of emphasis on the religious sense has brought the world to the edge of destruction. Our deepest source of power and perfection has been left miserably undeveloped. Prayer, the basic exercise of the spirit, must be actively practiced by man and nations. For if the power of prayer is again released and used in the lives of common men and women, there is yet hope that our prayers for a better world will be answered.

(Prayer is Power by Alexis Carrel in Reader’s Digest March 1963).