Sadness and Gladness

IT is not often that the subject of prayer is the focal point of international media. Corruption, riots, mass shootings, political intrigue, routine mutilations of each of the Ten Commandments: these are the daily fare that the media loves. But prayer in the headlines? This was startling.

But this is precisely what happened last month when a star player of the Buffalo football team  suddenly collapsed — without being touched — and fell flat on his back in the middle of a crucial game. This was not the usual football injury. He suffered cardiac arrest, was treated on the field, and was close to death as he was rushed to the emergency room. All this took place before a packed stadium and millions of media-watching sports fans.

The players from both teams were in shock, and they all fell to their knees in prayer for their fallen comrade. The picture of this prayer was flashed around the world. Even the Wall Street Journal ran an essay about this unexpected prayer phenomenon.

That these athletes, powerful specimens of physicality and certainly not your typical church goers, should spontaneously react to crisis by praying, demonstrates once again the universal human impulse to reach out to a Higher Power. The human soul requires regular contact with the Creator, just as human lungs require air. For deep within us there dwells a G-dly soul that yearns to connect with the Creator, a soul that, in our frantic pursuit of worldly things, is often suppressed and neglected until, in moments of deep distress, we discover that we are vulnerable and powerless. King David in Tehillim 130 expresses it famously: “Mimaamakim kerasicha Hashem — Out of the depths do I call out to you, O G-d.” Sometimes it takes the depths of hopelessness to resuscitate that dormant awareness of our utter loneliness. Lonely man reaching out to the lonely G-d (“lonely,” for He is the Only One) — this is what prayer is all about.