In the wake of tragedy, the words come quickly: ‘thoughts and prayers.’ They’re meant to soothe, yet those words often highlight how little seems to change.
For many, that phrase rings hollow. Overused. Trite. Like a shrug in the face of suffering. It’s supposed to signal empathy, and maybe a belief that prayer can help ease pain. But ‘thoughts and prayers’ has become shorthand for doing nothing – for bypassing the hard work of change.
Actually addressing complex issues like school shootings or poverty or more intense natural disasters is hard. It takes admitting there aren’t easy answers. That systems are interrelated and interdependent. That personal responsibility isn’t the solution to every problem. Complex problems often require complex solutions.
Maybe we say ‘thoughts and prayers’ because we feel powerless. Because it hurts too much to stay with grief. Because it feels like the only thing we can offer.
I don’t want to analyze the motivation of anyone who says, ‘thoughts and prayers,’ especially since I have used that phrase in the past … the distant past. There can be something powerful about thinking of those who are suffering and envisioning peace, love, and healing for them. Seeing their pain and picturing them through the storm into a brighter tomorrow. So I don’t want to dismiss prayer as an action.
Prayer itself is mysterious. We use the word as if we all share the same definition. Yet like every word related to spirituality, each pray-er carries their own understanding of how prayer does—or doesn’t—work.
Some hear ‘thoughts and prayers’ and think that those who pray believe there is a divine vending machine. Drop in the right words, press D-8, and out pops the answer we want. But I’m not sure many people who pray actually believe that.
When I was in high school geometry, every proof began with assumptions. Two points make a line. Parallel lines never meet. Start with different assumptions, and you’ll end up with a very different conclusion.
Prayer works the same way. What we assume about God, Spirit, the Universe – about how the world works – shapes what we believe prayer can or cannot do. We put our own understanding onto someone else’s words, assuming we know their motivations. That rarely opens space for compassion; it usually closes it.
Yet, if prayer is supposed to be something that changes external events, the research evidence is mixed. Over the last few decades, researchers have studied intercessory prayer, where people prayed for hospital patients. Some studies have found improvement. Others found little effect. But prayer is hard to study that way – you can’t really have a control group where you know no one in the world is praying for that person.
But here’s what the research does show: prayer consistently benefits the pray-er. It lowers anxiety. It slows breathing and heart rate. It increases meaning, connection, resilience, and even joy.
Prayer may not always change circumstances. But it often changes the pray-er.
For example, a woman prayed endlessly that her husband would stop his destructive behavior. Day after day she begged God to change him. Nothing shifted. Finally, she realized her prayer needed to change. She stopped asking God to fix her husband and began praying for the strength to care for herself. That inward shift – asking, ‘What can I do? How can I change?’ – gave her the courage to act.
That’s prayer working. Not because it “fixed” the situation the way she thought she wanted, but because it changed her, and in changing her, opened a new path forward.
We are both the prayer and the pray-er. (1)
Prayer is not just words floating upward. Prayer is embodied in us. It’s the way our longing for love, justice, or healing flows through our lives.
When I pray for peace, the prayer doesn’t end with my words. It takes root in my body, my choices, and my actions. In that sense, we don’t just pray for peace, we become the peace we long for.
So when public leaders offer only ‘thoughts and prayers’ after a tragedy, no wonder it feels empty. We’ve heard it after school shootings, after hurricanes, even after fires and floods fueled by climate change. The phrase ‘thoughts and prayers’ fills the airwaves, but rarely does it move us closer to real solutions.
Prayer was never meant to be a substitute for action. At its best, prayer is a complement. A source of courage. A way of aligning our hearts so that we can take the next faithful step.
True prayer doesn’t excuse us from responsibility. It draws us deeper into it.
What if ‘thoughts and prayers’ became more than words? What if they became a way of showing up – for our communities, for our children, and for a hurting world?
Prayer isn’t finished when it stays in words alone. It’s complete when it carries us into the world – when empathy becomes courage and when words become hands and feet of love.
That might mean writing to a legislator, showing up at a vigil, volunteering at a shelter, or simply sitting with someone so they don’t have to grieve alone. Small steps. Your life as a living prayer.
We are both the prayer and the pray-er.
When our prayers take shape in compassion and action, they plant seeds of love. And those seeds ripple outward, touching lives we may never see, expanding far beyond what we can imagine, to grow even more love.
Joni Miller, Ph.D., is a writer, researcher, spiritual coach, and speaker who uses her knowledge, education, and love of all things spiritual to help spiritual wanderers find a place they can call home, navigating by the light of Love. www.SpiritualGeography.net
(1) Cheston, S. E., & Miller, J. L. (2011). The use of prayer in counseling. In C. S. Cashwell & J. Young (Eds.) , Integrating spirituality and religion into counseling: A guide to competent practice (2nd ed.) (pp. 243-260). Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.
Photo by Lara Jameson: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-with-wax-candles-8887173/
