Noted women talk about prayer

October 2, 1982

Noted women talk about prayer
ITEM DETAILS
Type: Newspaper article
Author: Associated Press
Source: Scottsdale Daily Progress
Link to original not currently available.
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Article Text

(Automatically generated)

By The Associated Press
NEW ORIEANS - Life has its crossroads its
searing intervals when a person momenta~ily
isn't sure which way to go or what to do, but in
which the situation compels a choice. Out of experiencing such crises, four noted women say the
answers come through prayer .
"In faith , you turn to the source in times of
stress and there'll always be direction ," says
Coretta Scott King. "It may not be what you asked for, but it's what God wants you todo."
She says that was the determining factor after
a 1956 fire-bombing of her home where she and
her first child were alone, that forged her initial
fateful commitment to the civil rights cause led
by her late husband, Martin Luther King.

Shaken directly by the danger of it, "I had to do
some deep soul searching about my commitment
to the struggle. I knew I would have to be as committed as my husband. " Then and there, in
earnest prayer, cradling her child outside their
blasted bedroom, she made her commitment
"prepared for whatever might take place." '
"It ultimately did," she adds of the 1968
assassination of King.

She and other women - including Supreme

Court Justice Sandra O'CoMor - appeared on a
panel at the recent Episcopal Church convention
here, describing differing critical times in their
lives when they say they found God's guidance
through prayer.

Justice O'CoMor's hour of decision came when
the offer of the Supreme Court appointment
came, the first ever to a woman. "It was like a
~underbolt," she said. If she accepted it, "I knew
it would change my life unalterably and the lives
of my_ husband, my children, parents, relatives and friends."
Her ''first, immediate instinct was to pray to
God about how to respond," she said. "The
response derived from prayer was that we are to
use whatever talents God has given me.
"I think God has a calling for each of us," she
added, and once his will becomes clear and the
decision made, "don't look back" but "go forward" with it.
"All of a Christian's life is under God's will "
she said. "We have no right to divide our liv~s
between time for working and time for God. We
are to serve within whatever profession or trade
we are in, not just outside it."

Like her, King said she had "always felt that
God has a plan and purpose for one's life and you
have to pray to find it.
"God works through people in history to bring about justice."