Twice on Sunday afternoon I ran across the subject of right brain/left brain differences.  I think it’s a lesson on prayer.

Marion Cambre had a stroke on Sunday which paralyzed her left side.  That means the right brain was damaged by the temporary loss of blood.  When I visited her Sunday, the doctor explained that physical therapy is more effective and efficient when the stroke affects the right side of the brain.  Why?  Our ability to listen, speak, and reason is controlled by the left side of the brain.  So the patient has a better ability to work with the therapist if the left brain is functioning normally.

I also finished reading a book Sunday afternoon – Flickering Pixels, by Shane Hipps.  The book is about the interaction of technology with faith, especially the Christian faith.  The invention of the printing press moved western culture from the right brain (stories, relationships) to the left (words, logic). 

John Calvin both used and sealed the cultural shift to the left brain.  He used the power of the printed word and what he considered to be irrefutable and detailed logic to teach and spread the Christian faith.

Television and the Internet  shift us back the other direction.  We deal more in pictures, impressions, and subliminal messages encoded in colors and symbols – right brain stuff.  Our technology causes us to feel more than to think.

What I love about the Bible is that it’s both right brain (stories, poems, songs) and left brain (history, sermons, letters). 

And it also teaches us to pray both ways.  Sometimes our prayers take the form of logical, organized, appeals to heaven, following “rules” such as the ones I outlined in Sunday’s sermon from John Calvin.  That’s left brain stuff.

But sometimes our prayers are just cries of the heart, right brain longings that Paul describes in Romans 8:26 as “groans that words cannot express.”

God hears prayer from the right and the left.