Monday, October 18, 2004

The Science of Prayer

My life is immersed in busyness. I claim a way of living steeped in God's loving presence, but my activity proves me wrong. Take prayer, for instance. I know its importance. I've studied Jesus' teaching on the subject. But I forget. I am distracted.

Last night, I came across a series of studies on prayer, and I was reminded again of its effectiveness and my need.

In a 2001 study of women undergoing in vitro fertilization and embryo transfers, the test group (those women being prayed for) had twice as many successful pregnancies as those women in the control group.

A 1998 study on the effectiveness of "distance healing" found that AIDS patients receiving prayer had fewer and shorter hospitalizations than those not being prayed for.

In a 1988 study of 400 patients in the San Francisco General Hospital cardiac care unit, those who were assigned prayer had fewer cardiac arrests, needed artifical respiration less often, and suffered from pneumonia at 1/4 the incident rate of those not receiving prayer.

God is real, and he listens. This is good news.

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