Does God Intervene in our Lives?

God’s Ways Are Not Our Ways

I picture my relationship with God along those lines. If I pray fervently for a friend’s recovery, for instance, and it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t mean God hasn’t heard my prayer. It means that, as the prophet Isaiah says, “God’s ways are not our ways.” His/her reasons are simply beyond my grasp. I’m convinced, however, that some of my prayers of petition have been answered with a “yes.”

Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray and he responded with what we call “the Lord’s prayer,” a model of how Christians should pray. And in what is perhaps the most direct instruction on the topic, St. Paul urges readers in his first letter to the Thessalonians to “pray constantly, giving thanks in all circumstances.”

God gives us freedom to accept or reject his invitation of mutual love and I believe his/her frequent and continual intervention in our lives would jeopardize that freedom. Still, God’s intervention is evident in the Bible and in the lives of many throughout the ages. There’s no reason to believe it doesn’t happen in our age as well.