Last night I prayed that God would continue to inspire me with the words to write on these pages. I logged on just now with no idea of what to write about, attempting to apply the idea of knocking and the door being opened (©Jesus, circa 30 AD). After knocking very hard on the doors of the BBC football pages for a minute or so, I was drawn to a link to the blog of Mark Easton, the BBC Home Editor (whatever that is). Entitled, ‘Prayers for Muamba’, it was pretty obvious to me that this was God answering my prayer – which was rather ironic, given the content of the blog post itself.

If you don’t follow football, you might not have seen the news story regarding the Bolton player Fabrice Muamba, who had a heart attack whilst playing against Tottenham in the FA Cup. As I type, I believe he is still in a critical condition (the game was abandoned, just for reference). Many Premier League players have since come out in support (as you would hope), saying that the FA Cup has lost its importance at this time, but most significantly, stating that they and their team mates are praying for Muamba, and encouraging others to do the same. Mark Easton’s blog is a discussion not of the rights or wrongs of prayer, more the efficacy, but of course it has generated a barrage of comments, mostly anti-prayer. He concludes, in true BBC sitting-on-the fence, not-offending-any-particular-group sort of way, that‘intercessory prayer is a straightforward way for an individual to focus the mind on their capacity to think nice thoughts’.

Clearly, the message here is not, ‘do we want Fabrice Muamba to get better?’ However, nor is it, ‘what about those poor French people who got shot today? Did prayer work for them?’, which is a recurring theme in the comment thread that follows the article. Yes, it’s a discussion that could continue another time, but I think it’s worth staying with the sentiment that is being expressed here by a load of people who, to my knowledge, don’t regularly, or ever, pray. Gary Cahill wore a ‘Pray 4 Muamba’ shirt for Chelsea yesterday, and Owen Coyle, Muamba’s manager, stated that the club were praying for the player. There is clearly an in-built association with the word ‘prayer’ for everyone, and for most people, it’s almost like a survival reflex, coming to the fore only when a serious threat to normality is detected.

Mark Easton’s blog cited several studies that have been carried out into the effectiveness of prayer, but again, for me, prayer’s effectiveness is not what’s up for debate here (as an aside, there has apparently been a study of prayer in which groups of seeds were prayed/not prayed for. The prayed-for seeds did better. Only a scientist, etc…..). As has been stated before by tons of folk, if prayer could be proven to work, then that would remove the element of faith that it requires. Christians should just stop trying to prove the effectiveness of prayer, believe in it, and just get on with doing it, because that’s what we are told to do. What action should followers of Jesus take as a result of this story? I believe we shouldn’t be trying to convince the world of prayer’s effectiveness, but of its necessity.

Another study cited on Easton’s blog concluded that the greatest positive change resulting from prayer occurred amongst the people doing the prayer. So there’s an element of truth in Easton’s bland summary statement above. Prayer focuses our minds, bringing closer in line with God’s will. God never states that he will answer all prayers in the way that we want; he certainly answers all prayers, but in his own time and in his own way. And as he is outside of time, and we cannot fathom his ways, we often think he hasn’t answered our prayers. If you’re a follower of Jesus, I bet you can recall times when you’ve prayed for something, it hasn’t turned out how you wanted it to, but further down the line you’ve realised it was for the best. That’s God’s timing in action. With respect to the football-types mentioned above, do they understand that? My guess is that they are falling into the trap of trying to use prayer like Aladdin used his lamp.

But this is natural if you don’t have that relationship with Jesus, that understanding of prayer. How do we, as Christians respond to this outpouring of prayerful sentiment being expressed by people who don’t fully understand it? Certainly not by mocking their sudden turning to God. Clearly it would be better for people to come to know God through more positive circumstances, but we’re human – times of trouble lead us to increasingly desperate measures. The Bible is full of people who only turn to God when they’re desperate. Why should we expect people with everything going for them to be any different? Let’s join these seekers in their heartfelt, simple prayers. Jesus said that we must become like children in the way we pray – not immature or less intelligent, just simplistic in what we ask of God and in the way we trust him to answer. I believe there is a lesson for those of us who over-complicate prayer. As well as praying for Fabrice Muamba to be healed, let’s pray for those who know very little about prayer but who have been drawn to it through these events.

Have you ever listened to a story on the news, or heard about a dispute, and got the feeling that everyone seems to be missing the real point? I seem to have had that feeling a few times recently.

I’ll start with a less contentious example; the ‘John Craven Investigates’ feature on Countryfile last night (yes, I really am that much of an anorak) was about how we need improved food labelling so that we can work out the ‘carbon footprint’ of the foods we buy. There was a discussion about buying locally sourced food, only buying stuff in season, etc – but the report finished with the scientist saying that actually, we waste on average a quarter of all the food we buy in this country, and if we stopped doing that, the effect would be equivalent to halving car use. The issue here is clearly not about how well our food is labelled, but about being less greedy and using common sense. The generation that survived World War II must’ve been horrified by that statistic on wastefulness…..

Again, we constantly hear about banker’s bonuses, and what is (or isn’t) going to be done about it. Yes, we’re probably now at the point where only legislation will change the way it is (and only until someone finds a loophole in it) – but surely we need to think about why we allow that kind of thing in the first place, and why people are so motivated to get these huge amounts of money.

Then we have the tragic story of the soldiers killed in the bomb blasts in Afghanistan last week. We can talk about the losses to their families and communities all we like. We can have a minute’s silence/applause at every sporting event under the sun. We can have the woman from Look North doing all the Bible readings she can handle at as many memorial services as there are churches (yes, it really did happen). But the underlying issue is why the soldiers needed in that situation in the first place….

We can apply the same principle – that of finding the underlying moral issue – with just about any news story we see, so I won’t go through any more examples for fear of sounding like a Daily Mail reader. As Christians, how should we react differently to stories such as these? Should we react differently? I worry that we seem to be losing the overriding perspective, the eternal perspective of knowing God, and instead we are allowing ourselves to get bogged down with the man-made stuff.

That’s not to say, of course, that we shouldn’t take an interest in, or be involved with, issues that we see around us. The Gospel calls us to do just that, but whilst maintaining the worldview that comes from a relationship with God. I realise that it’s easy – especially if you don’t know, or believe in, God – to pass this off as ‘having your head in the clouds’ or ‘burying your head in the sand’ – kind of like taking a spiritual anti-depressant so that we can float through life. But that’s not it at all. In order to address the roots of the problems we see, we need to be grounded ourselves, and have a perspective that looks beyond even death. Of course it’s possible to be able to ‘put things in perspective’ as a non-Christian – but you can never look beyond death, or put events into spiritual terms.

Being a follower of Jesus is about getting into the nitty-gritty details of a problem without getting bogged down with it, to the point where there seems no way out. I wonder to what degree the church is offering that to people at the moment, people like the families of the soldiers that were killed? I ask this as a genuine question, hoping that the church is offering them support and comfort at this time. I guess my view of that situation is tarnished by the images of the memorial services I saw on the news; high church, funny-hat-and-robe affairs, yet oddly featuring the contributions of spokespeople from other faiths across the region, presumably in the interests of not offending them, or rather the predominantly atheist viewing public (Look North’s only screened contributions were from the Muslim representative – should we assume that the minister in charge of the service had nothing meaningful to say?)

I’m getting side-tracked into a different issue, and I don’t want anyone misinterpreting what I’m saying about other faiths (just to be clear, I’m attacking traditional, museum-based high church. And Look North.) But our perspective on the world as Christians should lead to concern for every situation and the people involved. Should we be getting on our high horse about the possibility of gay marriages (setting aside the issue of whether or not it’s right to force a minister to carry out a duty he or she doesn’t agree with, for one moment), or should we be focusing on why the church (by which I mean the institution) isn’t seeking to include homosexual people more readily, with a view to guiding them with this issue?

I don’t feel like we should remain a distant, mystical presence that people can fall back onto when bad things happen. Do we want a person’s only experience of church to be coming in to light a candle when a loved one has died? I know that this can provide some comfort through its symbolism, but it’s in the follow-up actions that our perspective can be shared. There will always be bad stuff happening that we need to deal with – as followers of Jesus, are we giving the world the tools to do that?