Another day, on another page I'll tell the story about my personal recovery from the depths of poor health.

But today I see the great help God gives me with increasing my personal responsibility for not only myself, but others. Prayer has been natural to me with my Eastern heritage. It has taken a different turn than in the West, where dotors and scientists are wont to "test" the validity of prayer. I'm sure they never think they can prove "scientificlly" that prayer "works." But that is just what some Western Scientists have done:

ABSTRACT: The therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer (IP) to the Judeo-Christian God, one of the oldest forms of therapy, has had little attention in the medical literature.
To evaluate the effects of IP in a coronary care unit (CCU) population, a prospective randomized double-blind protocol was followed. Over ten months, 393 patients admitted
to the CCU were randomized, after signing informed consent, to an intercessory prayer group (192 patients) or to a control group (201 patients). While hospitalized, the first
group received IP by participating Christians praying outside the hospital; the control group did not. At entry, chi-square and stepwise logistic analysis revealed no statistical difference between the groups. After entry, all patients had follow-up for the remainder of the admission. The IP group subsequently had a significantly lower severity score based on the hospital course after entry (P < .01). Multivariate analysis separated the groups on the basis of the outcome variables (P < .0001). The control patients required ventilatory assistance, antibiotics, and diuretics more frequently than patients in the IP group. These data suggest that intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God has a beneficial therapeutic effect in patients admitted to a CCU. (source)

Harry came to me at the age of 78 obviously in need of help.

He came into my Kung Fu School with a cane and dozens of too-many-pounds of stored rich foods.

Should I pray for God to somehow miraculously remove 70 pounds from his frame?

I have grown up enough from the age of 10 to realize that God does expect to help those who help themselves and that you might better not ask God to cure a diabetic when a lock on the cookie jar and some diet self-discipline would allow the person to demonstrate (to God) that he is taking responsibility for himself.

Yes, I prayed for Harry, but I prayed that God would help him find the truth of self-responsibility, even if that meant he saw the wisdom of more help from me.

It has worked fabulously, with Harry changing his diet, losing many pounds, exercising regularly and greatly improving his health.

It would not be blasphemous to suggest that God has, at least in part, wrought this miracle.

Harry has said, "It IS a miracle!" Harry, I and God could each have different opinions of who caused which part of that miracle.

The image of Harry on the left is some 7 months after the date of the image above. Harry has not only lost weight (on our schedule) but has earned his Yellow Belt and has a degree of happiness that had been missing for years.

Miracles happen around me and I don't need to take credit. I know my own wisdom, even the advice I get from God is my miracle.

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