Why? Pray

"To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Cor 12:7-10
     We all wonder why God let's bad things happen. Although, we can never fully understand the answer to why he allows it,  we can be confident in his promise that his grace is sufficient for you, his power is made perfect in weakness. "I have seen people of faith pray and nothing happens and I have seen people with no faith at all receive miraculous healings,"  a sitcom doctor responded to his patient's question, "Do you think God cares?" I am not sure what conclusion the writer of this script wanted us to come to. Did he want us to conclude that prayer is of no value or that God does not care?
     I am not going to try to explain why God allows bad things to happen but I can assure you God does care and prayer is of great value. Prayer is what draws us into relationship with God through Christ. In the middle of a lonely, sleepless night I clung to the receiver of the emergency room pay phone waiting for my parents to answer. Did I think they could save my husband who was being hooked to a venilator as I dialed? Regardless that there was nothing they could do to help him, knowing they knew we were there reassured me I was not alone in the world. Praying to God about the same situation, gave me a great peace that his fate was in God's hands no matter what the outcome.
     Every step of the way, I stayed close in prayer with my God through Christ, my healer and hope. I clung to that hope until God said, "no." I prayed but we did not recieve a miracle, my husband died the next night surrounded by his children, friends, and family. God did not heal my husband that night but I knew he still cared. I know that he heard my prayers and that he cared for my  husband, too. Why didn't he heal him?
     I can't answer the why but God showed me many times that he was still there. Through prayer he answered many, many times that he had not abandoned me. Through prayer he showed my husband hours before he died that he was still there with him. "You have to let me go," my husband whispered in his last words he spoke to me. God embraced me with his peace through those words several hours later when I was asked to sign a 'Do Not Resuscitate' order.
     The Holy Spirit poured out his love to me in the hours, days, months, and years that followed my husband's death as I kept close to Christ through prayer every step of the way. You can not measure the value of prayer by the outcome of the situation; there is power in knowing God is listening. We don't know the answer to the why questions. However, we do know "the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, (Peter 3:12)."
     "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." Romans 5:1-5.