Prayer

[Whateverist]

I'd also like to clear up again that I do believe in miracles. However, I understand they are very rare, and the general consensus in my faith is that it is much more likely that God answers prayers by working through people rather than through supernatural intervention.  

If I lost my car keys, for example, I could pray for God to make them magically appear in front of me. Or I could pray for God's help in trying to remember where I put them, or in thinking of likely places I could look. 

But probably 99.9% of the time, when people lose their keys and ask God for help, they mean the latter.

My bolded. 

This is what I mean by leaving the door open on your side.  When we stop messing with all the conscious bells and whistles and talking to ourselves about what we in all our self importance shall do next, we might actually get the unconscious mind to chip in .. or God as you call it.

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When a person prays to find misplaced keys or whatever, it's eminently likely that taking those few moments pause gives the mind the opportunity to reflect on the situation and allow the memory od what you did witht he keys to bob to the surface. In that sense, prayer can be said to work; but it's not some divine helping hand, so much as the act of not trying to think for a moment.

Ninja'd .. but I worked in more bells and whistles.