Around Christina Levasheff, though, there is a palpable sense of quiet.
She sits across a small table from me.
Although she smiles softly, her eyes don’t convey the same emotion.
They prayed for healing.
So did their friends, relatives and a vast connection of believers they didn’t even know.
“We didn’t plan a funeral,” she tells me.
“I had in mind this celebration-of-life party that we were going to have when Judson was healed.
We talked about what that would look like, when everybody was expecting a funeral.”
The funeral came before Judson turned 3.
That was seven years ago.
“People come to me and say, ‘Well, God did heal your son.
He just healed him in heaven,’ " says Christina.
She smiles again, but two tears slide down her cheeks.
“My response to them is, ‘That’s not what I prayed for.’
"
I sit there and, like those well-meaning friends, I don’t know what to say.
“I still believe in thepower of prayer,” she says firmly.
“I’m conflicted, I’m angry, and I hurt.
But I still believe that God wants us to meet him where we are.”
It seems that as long as humans have endured the cares of this world, they have been praying.
Luhrmann and I were sitting in a lunchroom on the Stanford campus.
“Then again, Christians often say that God actually does answer all our prayers.
He just doesn’t give us the answer we want.”
But, as Luhrmann explains, “prayer is an action.
It makes you feel like you’re doing something, even if it hasn’t yet helped.”
Of those unaffiliated with any religion, 65 percent pray weekly.
But then there are the S.O.S.
We seem to think so; the numbers are consistent across generations.
And another 35 percent or so say they received several such answers in the past year.
Those inspiring stories about answered prayer miraculous or humdrum constitute the feel-good side of prayer.
