Prayer

[picchick]

I know that we need to pray. It is our conversation with God. But I don't understand why we need to pray for an end to the evils in the world. Doesn't God want that to end anyway? Why doesn't he just do it? Why does he wait for a ton of people to ask for it first?

I love to pray and I still pray for an end to those evils in the world. But this question just keeps coming into my head.

Thanks!!

[Adeodatus]

Hi. Good question!

Let's put it this way: God never changes His mind. Not because He's stubborn, but because He is Eternal Wisdom.

Our prayer doesn't change God's mind, but it changes us. Through our conversing with God and raising our minds and hearts to Him in prayer, God is able to change us. And He answers our prayer when we have changed and it is the right time for Him to grant it.

God is all-good, and will definitively end evil in our lives on the last day, at the blast of the last trumpet, when Christ will come in glory with the angels and will judge the nations. But God wants us to pray for the flouring of what is good and for the end of evil, because that will change us into the sort of people who will rejoice in His Kingdom. By praying for that we truly become in grace what God has made us by grace, sons and daughters of the world that is to come. By praying for an end to evil, we become less evil ourselves (if our hearts are open to God!).