We’ve all seen it happen before. A disaster of great magnitude strikes causing nearly incomprehensible destruction. Images of suffering and devastation are everywhere. We can’t take our eyes off the scene. Everyone watches feeling the utmost sympathy for the poor people affected while also feeling so lucky that they themselves weren’t harmed. We go through this countless times and each time when we ask what can we do, we get the same response.
Pray.

Pray to god and he’ll make it better. Is that true? Is prayer really the best thing we can do in a situation such as this? Do we really believe that praying is the only thing we can do for those who are suffering? OR, do we simply feel helpless, maybe even a little apathetic and use prayer simply to say, “I did something.” Prayer is the ultimate quick fix to the morale dilemma between our own selfishness and our strong sense of compassion. When it seems like there is nothing we can do, we use prayer so as to feel like we are helping. We use it as a crutch to pardon ourselves from our own laziness. When a hurricane strikes, sure we could have a fundraiser, or we could just lie in bed and ask god to do something. It’s like we are taking the burden off ourselves and delegating the task to someone else to deal with. We’re shirking off our own responsibility of aiding our fellow humans, but we avoid any guilt because praying makes us feel like we have done something.
The truth is, whether you are religious or not, you cannot deny that many people use prayer as an excuse, a way of getting out of actually helping. My point is not to degrade the power of prayer. It is simply to chastise the way it is so often used to excuse oneself from further action. There is so much that any person can do to help those in need. All it takes is a little effort on your own part. I challenge you to go beyond prayer, to take action, to do something. Don’t be sucked into the course of guiltless inaction we call prayer.