The Efficacy of Prayer?

I have always been a little hesitant to join the line of those who add names to the Misha Berakh list. I wonder about when the right time is to add someone's name. Does the level of illness matter? Does the problem have to be life-threatening? When do you stop? After all, recovery is a relative thing.

Now there is a study that only adds to my lack of enthusiasm for this custom. William Saletan at Slate writes about a study that investigates the efficacy of prayer for those who are sick. Of course, the fact that this is a study that involved only Christian prayer might explain the miserable lack of success in prayer, but I wouldn't be the one to say that. (Just kidding, really :-) )

Rather, I suspect that the value of the Misha Berakh is not physical but spiritual. As the one who says it, I have taken perhaps the only concrete action that I can to "help" someone in physical duress. If I can't cure them and I have already done the chicken soup thing, what is left? There is prayer. Prayer may not directly lead to their recovery. In fact, prayer may do nothing at all to change the outcome of their sickness, but it does fill the spiritual need to be closer to both G-d and the sick person.

If I am the sick person, then prayer has a similar effect. Knowing that there are those who would pray for me, even strangers who say my name at a particular moment in a particular way, may bring me a measure of comfort. There is value in being part of a community. That value may not be medical, but it is value nevertheless.

Prayer may have nothing to do with healing, at least not of the medical kind. But is has everything to do with how we connect to G-d and to each other. We didn't need a study to tell us that.