Daily Practice January 19, 2026 Issue

Do our prayers really make a difference to others?

Larissa Snorek

This question sometimes comes when our heart goes out to someone struggling or we’re moved by a difficult news story. Even when we take the demand to pray seriously, it can feel as though our individual prayers may be too small to really matter.

A study of Christian Science, though, shows that prayer isn’t a fragile hope cast out into an immense darkness. Rather, it’s a conscious realization of divine Truth, and this realization has power. Mary Baker Eddy defines prayer not as pleading with a distant God but as awakening to God’s infinite goodness as already present, right in the midst of whatever seems difficult.

She writes, “Prayer can neither change God, nor bring His designs into mortal modes; but it can and does change our modes and our false sense of Life, Love, and Truth, uplifting us to Him” (No and Yes, p. 39). We don’t pray, then, to get God to do something but to change us—to bring our human consciousness in line with the harmony that forever characterizes God’s creation. This harmony is an already-established spiritual fact of God’s creation as whole and good. Glimpsing this shifts our view, and, in turn, the light within our own thoughts brings healing to the world around us, even though it may not be immediately discernible.