It changes me.

In light of the elementary school shooting that happened in CT last week, 

I have been thinking a lot. As I watched the news in the ATL airport, 

I couldn't help but remember the Columbine High School shooting, and how it felt

to live so near to something so tragic. My 10-year-old mind couldn't understand 

it, & if I'm honest, my 23-year-old mind still doesn't. 

As a person who believes that there is a higher power- that there is a purpose

bigger than myself, I struggle with the idea of prayer. 

Whether they formally did it or not, I'd bet that every child's parent

at that school formulated the thought, "please, don't let it be my child."

Yet, for 20 families, it was their child. So does prayer work, or does it not? 

My heart knows it does, but situations like these make me question

my own grasp on it all. I can certainly see how easily one can lose hope

when something so devastating happens. 

I just started reading a book yesterday, & came across this. It seemed pretty 

opportune for the thoughts inside my head: 

"It is not so true that 'prayer changes things' as that prayer changes us, 

& then we change things. Jesus Chris is not a social reformer. He came to alter us

first, & if there is any social reform to be done on earth, we must do it. 

God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of redemption alters the 

way we look at things. Prayer is not altering things externally, but working wonders

within our disposition. When we pray, things remain the same but we begin to be different.

We are never what we are in spite of our circumstances, but because of them."

-Oswald Chambers