God is Not Prozac

Really.  It's true.  It must be.  The current edition of Ladies Home Journal told me so.   

The article, entitled Let Us Pray (by Katharine Whittemore), examines the benefits of prayer.  The overall question examined in the article is this: 

Even when people come from different cultures and different faiths, they can generally agree on this one thing: Prayer helps. But why?

Good question.

Certainly the answer is not that praying guarantees a positive outcome to our requests.  Nor is it because the disappointments and stresses of life magically disappear.  The helpfulness of prayer is not even necessarily related to having experienced answered prayer in the past.

The magazine article explores a number of possible reasons as to why prayer is helpful.  As you would expect, they range from the physical (those who pray tend to have lower blood pressure) to the psychological (lower rates of depression) to the neurological (changing activity in different cortexes of the brain.)  The article also notes that these positive outcomes are common to all faiths and even to no faith, but rather a focus on meditation.

So all prayer (or meditation) is equal?

Perhaps.  

If, and only if, your criteria of effectiveness is confined to the physical, psychological, and neurological.

Which, of course, ours is not.

The magazine article quotes a rabbi as saying, "If you think about it, prayer connects you to hope."  

     That is very true.  

     But also incomplete.  

     For prayer connects you to far more than just hope.

It connects you to 

     God.