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The Power of Prayer
These Days of Awe we spend a lot of time in the synagogue fully involved in prayer. One of the requirements for prayer to be successfully accepted is that we believe in the power of our supplications. Because of sincere prayers, Hashem can sometimes make extraordinary things happen.In our shul, someone hung up a sign with the following, moving story.
Rabbi Diamond (a Rabbi in Deal, NJ) related an incredible true story that happened recently. An elderly lady in a nearby nursing home passed away. Her children, who had always visited her and taken good care of her, did their duty and organized a proper Jewish Tahara and burial.
On the 5th day of sitting shiva, the phone rang and the daughter sitting shiva answered the phone. On the other end of the phone was her mother whom she had just buried. The daughter, in shock, immediately fainted. The phone rang again and it was her mother again, complaining that no one had come to visit her that week.
The family then rushed to the nursing home and discovered that there was a mix up there and it was their mother's roommate who had passed away and not their mother. So now the nursing home staff had the grim job of informing the children of the other lady that their mother had died 5 days ago.
A nurse called and was trying to break the sad news to these children slowly but before she could even tell them what had happened, they callously answered that if this call has anything to do with their mother they were not interested. They said "All day long our mother wastes her time and just prays and prays and says Psalms. And the one thing she prays for is that when she dies she should have a proper Jewish burial."
The children cruelly added, "But we will outsmart her and when she dies we will spite her and make sure she will not have a proper Jewish burial."
The nurse then explained to them that it was too late as she had already received the kind of burial she had prayed for!
Rabbi Diamond said that we should learn from this the power of sincere prayer and the extent to which Hashem will turn the world around to answer one. This pious religious lady only prayed for one thing: a proper Jewish burial; knowing that it was almost impossible. Yet she didn't give up. Remarkably, Hashem orchestrated this whole mix up to respond to her prayers.
Rabbi Diamond added that any one of our prayers can have the same potential and power.
Gemar chasimah tovah.
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