Prayer Flight

I read today about a group of 50 rabbis and Kabbalah mystics who have taken spiritual action to protect Israel from the devastating effects of the h1n1 virus. The holy men circled Israel in a chartered plane offering prayers for the abolishing illness. An integral part of the ceremony was the blowing of ram's horns (shofar) seven times. It is said that shofars were first used by the Jews to bring down the walls of Jericho for centuries the horns have been used to make high moments in the Judaic life such as introducing the arrival of the new year, signalling the Shabbat which is the Jewish holy day and ending the fast at Yom Kippur.

I was awed by the faith of these religious people that they would re-enact an ancient battle tactic as described in the Torah to fight a tiny enemy that destroys from within one's self and believe that in marking this ritual, God would stop the progress of the disease.

I wonder though, if their prayers would truly please the creator of all things when the scope of the prayer seemed to focus on only one small nation in a threatened world. I am making this assumption because the three previous prayer flights were very precisely calculated: to protect Israel from invasion by the Nazi's in 1948, the second to prevent action against the country during the Gulf war and the third to avert a wave of terrorist attacks in 1996.

Perhaps I am a petty theologian but it seems to me that a chorus of universal prayer blanketing our world would be more pleasing the creator that the prayers so many offer that are so focused on the self.