{"id":23186,"date":"2024-09-19T08:32:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T08:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=23186"},"modified":"2024-12-13T09:34:38","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T09:34:38","slug":"misc-the-uses-of-prayer-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=23186","title":{"rendered":"MiSC: The Uses of Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My great and longest standing buddy, Dan Ellis, has been battling thymic cancer for several years now. It was discovered, alas, at what they call, Stage 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He posted an update on his current status yesterday. On the one hand it sounds pretty awful: constant pain, lots of quite invasive and draining treatments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other it\u2019s quite positive: he has a loving family and devoted wife, and a well remunerated and supportive\/understanding job; a very fine oncologist; and his treatments thus far have been very effective ; i.e. he\u2019s still alive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that long ago a stage four diagnosis meant imminent death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I first learned of his illness, I tried to go and see him weekly. Sadly since then my own life issues have intervened and made that much harder to do. And these days I hardly ever see him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I posted a comment to his latest update, and a screenshot of his wife Amy\u2019s response is stop this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was tempted to say Dan is \u2018in our prayers daily\u2018. But I opted instead to say \u2018in our thoughts daily.\u2019 And that\u2019s for me thinking about what prayer might actually be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One definition of prayer is that we are asking for intercession from a supernatural source – most popularly in our present culture the \u2018all powerful\u2019 being called God – to alter the course of reality in our favour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s quite obviously poppycock. And a fools\u2019 recourse. At least in my opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But another definition of prayer might be simply the speaking out of a thing \u2018devoutly\u2019 or keenly wished for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My great and longest standing buddy, Dan Ellis, has been battling thymic cancer for several years now. It was discovered, alas, at what they call, Stage 4. He posted an update on his current status yesterday. On the one hand it sounds pretty awful: constant pain, lots of quite invasive and draining treatments. On the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MiSC: The Uses of Prayer”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-61Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23186"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23186"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25298,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23186\/revisions\/25298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}