Pamela Brode discovered that praying regularly helped her cope with raising two children with disabilities and other challenges in her life, such as losing her eyesight and undergoing a number of surgeries to regain her vision. Inspired by her experiences, she began collecting stories from others who had been transformed by prayer. Their stories are a large part of The Power of Prayer: Make a Joyful Noise.

Brode, who lives in Durham, N.C., and has been a Baha'i for 29 years, talked about her new book in a recent phone interview.

Bahai.us: When did you start praying?

Brode: Even when I was young I loved God and was always talking to him. As a little girl I recognized that´s what prayer was all about. He always made my heart happy, and I felt he assisted and protected me. As a young adult, I prayed sporadically, and my life was in disarray and without direction. But in 1979 when I became Baha´i I learned to become systematic in praying daily.
Through daily prayer I felt a greater sense of direction, clarity, strength, comfort, hope and an overall joy for life. And I noticed that daily prayer enabled me to deal with challenges and gave me a trust in God that all would turn out fine. Daily prayer also spurred me to take positive action.

Bahai.us: What advice do you have for those who would like to pray but aren´t accustomed to doing so?

Brode: It requires discipline to get into the habit of praying daily. If we pray with a modicum of sincerity and are open to searching for spiritual truth, the assistance we receive is immeasurable. Through the purity of our prayer we become more in tune with our spiritual reality and the purpose for which we were created—to know and to love God. According to Baha´i scripture, no matter how spiritual our words are, they´re meaningless without love. In order to bask in his infinite love and be receptive to his blessings we need to love God. Without love we are blind to God´s bestowals.

Bahai.us: So how do we learn to love God?

Brode: We pray to him! We ask him, ‘Please God, help me to love you more.´ Daily prayer offered in private sustains our love for God, thus nurturing our spiritual growth. And once we have incorporated prayer into our everyday routine, our hearts become so filled with the love of God that it becomes unthinkable to go a day without sustaining that love and our faith through prayer.

Bahai.us: And then what happens?

Brode: Well, prayer is not an Aladdin´s lamp. You don´t rub the lamp and a genii pops out. Rather, we need to be patient and put our trust in God. As we become more in tune with our spirituality, we cultivate a better understanding of what to pray for. Through daily prayer we attain a nearness to the Holy Spirit, enabling us to luxuriate in God´s love. But prayer in words alone is not enough. According to Baha´i scripture, we show our love for God by obeying His laws and striving to live a goodly life.

Bahai. us: The stories in your book are about individuals from various religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. How is Baha´i prayer different?

Brode: From the Baha´i perspective, prayer is talking to God in a loving spirit, having a personal conversation with God. As in all the world´s religions, prayer for Baha'is is an essential element in our Faith. And, like many religions, the Baha´i Faith considers daily prayer obligatory. But what is unique is the Baha´i approach to prayer, which centers on the purity of motive. Baha´i scripture prescribes that when we pray, it should be free of ritualism, rigidity and pageantry. As the Báb (the forerunner of Bahá´u´lláh, the prophet-founder of the Baha´i Faith) said, “The most acceptable prayer is the one offered with the utmost spirituality and radiance.’ Also, while Baha´is are free to offer prayers spontaneously from the heart, most believers find a special potency in reading, reciting, chanting or singing the prayers and verses found in Baha´i scripture. Baha'is also are free to use the prayers and verses from sacred texts of other religions.

Bahai.us: In addition to understanding the power of prayer, is there any other message with which you´d like to leave readers?

Brode: My hope is that readers will be so inspired by the stories in this book that it will encourage them to incorporate private, daily prayer into their own lives. Just imagine how much better the conditions of the world would be if all of us not only prayed for our own soul everyday, but also prayed for each other? The stories illustrate that regardless of our different backgrounds and what we call God, we fundamentally are one human race. They also affirm that there is one God and that there is a fundamental unity underlying religion. That´s the main core belief of the Baha´i Faith. I hope those who read The Power of Prayer will experience a spiritual journey and perhaps awakening.