Should Doctors be Allowed to Pray for Thier Patients?

Image by Samiul via Flickr

Prayer meetings for doctors and medical staff are taking place in St. Jehoshaphat Church in Lviv, Western Ukraine, reports The Christian Telegraph in reference to The Ukrainian Greek- Catholic Church website and credo-ua.org. Such cooperation of clergy and medics is called to help patients that are in need of healing.

The meetings were founded by Father Vladimir Gruz who, while studying in Austria, took a great interest in the idea of one doctor, who started a prayer group with her staff.

“Though medicine in the West has an abundance of resources, doctors understood that they are merely instruments in God’s hands and, without Him, these doctors could not treat patients,” notes Father Vladimir.

He adopted this Western practice for Ukraine in light of the mass violations of patient rights and late medical aid, leading to cases of death and disability in the country.

via Doctors pray for patients in Western Ukraine.

No Prayer at 9/11 Memorial Service: ‘Has America Lost It’s Way?’

The 10th year service memorializing one of the most significant events in American history, will not include prayer.  How have we let this happen?

The 10th anniversary memorial service of New York’s 9/11 tragedy will not include clergy or prayers, it has been revealed. The ban has caused upset because church leaders played a vital role in the aftermath of the tragedy. Former Deputy Mayor of New York Rudy Washington, who was serving in office at the time of the 9/11 attacks, expressed outrage at the exclusion.SurprisedMr Washington said: “This is America, and to have a memorial service where there’s no prayer, this appears to be insanity to me. I feel like America has lost its way”.City Council Member Fernando Cabrera, a pastor at New Life Outreach International, said he was “Utterly disappointed and surprised”.He told The Wall Street Journal that religious leaders were “one of the pillars that carried us through. They were the spiritual and emotional backbone, and when you have a situation where people are trying to find meaning, where something is bigger than them, when you have a crisis of this level, they often look to the clergy.”

via No clergy or prayers at 9/11 memorial service | News | The Christian Institute.

Is God Hiding?

PSA 139:8  If I ascend up into heaven, thou
art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. 

It appears that we are living in a time of concealment when God has hidden His face from us. There is so much uncertainty. It is as if we in the Body of Christ have been put on pause and we are waiting for something to happen to lift us out of the catastrophic proportion of distress that we are experiencing. Countries are at war internally as well as externally. Parents are killing their children and children are killing their parents. There is an inordinate amount of natural disasters, earth quakes, tsunamis, droughts and storms. With masses of knowledge and technology there are still illnesses that man can’t heal.

PSA 75:5  Lift not up your
horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck.6
For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor
from the south.7  But God is the judge:
he putteth down one, and setteth up another.

 

The word of God says in Psalms 75:6 that promotion comes neither from the east, west or south. However, the psalmist fails to mention the North. During biblical times the people believed that the mountains that lay far to the North bordering the Mesopotamian Valley were the end of the world. The Hebrew word for North is sapon meaning “hidden or secret” and it was commonly thought that the North was outside of the natural domain therefore it was hidden from human view. The psalmist’s lack of use of the North is a tacit indication that there is nothing in this tangible, material world, the world as we know it that can cause real promotion. He implies that in order to be lifted out of our current situations we must seek relief in a place that is outside of our natural realm. Only from the secrets of God’s counsel can real promotion and elevation come.

PSA 121:1  I will lift up
mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.2  My help cometh from the LORD, which made
heaven and earth.3  He will not suffer
thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

 

I have good news for you God is not hiding. You can look to God for help because He is reliable. His word says that He does not sleep. Regardless to what you are going through you can depend on Him. The word says that He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He will never leave you or forsake you. The same God that stood by Moses in the cliff of the rock stands beside you in your every situation.

By. Dr. Olivia Hines

Related articles

• Pope: God is always close, even in days of sorrow and responds to those who pray (onecatholicnews.wordpress.com)
• Think About This Today (stevensawyer.wordpress.com)