Some people, even religious ones, think that prayer doesn't work, or that it at least has no impact on a larger scale of things, that it changes nothing about the world or your own life. At best, it's just for personal reflection and nothing more. I can say from experience that this is utterly untrue.
Prayer may not always give us the results we want. In other words, the answer from the Gods could be something we just don't want to hear. But it's entirely false to say that prayer has no power.
I actually became a Hellenist officially because of a prayer that the Gods answered immediately right before my eyes in 2009. So for someone, even a high religious leader, to tell me that prayer doesn't work, makes me take a big yawn at best.
First, let's begin on a personal level. As someone who has suffered in the past from severe mental health issues like depression and anxiety disorder, prayer and ritual had the potential to change everything about my day. In 2017, my doctors even told me to institute prayer as part of my treatment because it worked so well for me.
Literally, it helped solve my problems, because when you are in the presence of the Gods, evil and illness can't remain. You don't experience the latter anymore because those things simply don't exist in the presence of Divinity.
But I have also seen my prayers impact the course of things in the outside world as well. In one case, my family and I were involved in a rather ugly lawsuit with one of my wife's former employers a very long time ago.
We were not in the wrong in the matter at all, but they compiled loads of "claims and witnesses against her." Basically, people they convinced to be on their side because they still worked for the company. We thought there was a good chance we would lose and unjustly have to pay them about $3,000.
I cannot tell you how many times I prayed to Athena, who is the Goddess of law and justice, to intervene. Not only did we win the case, the employer ended up having to pay us over $1,000 at ruling. Additionally, after more prayers for help in the future job market for my wife, she quickly attained a better one than before.
No one can tell me that prayer doesn't work, because in our most troubled times, the Gods have heard and answered my family's.
In the Goodness of the Gods,
I'll see you at the next Herm down the road,
Priest Christopher.
