If, as we all should, you pray as soon as you see an accident or fire engine, with bubbletops flaming, it's fascinating to hear from near-death accounts how much those prayers and thoughts count.
One, quoted by a priest recently, involved a woman who left her body and floated high above it during an accident and saw beams of light from the cars of those praying -- while also perceiving negativity from those who were impatient with the snarl of traffic caused by her serious mishap. In the words of another who recounted this same incident, there was "a traffic jam on the highway caused by a car wreck and one woman in the wreck was seriously injured. The crash had injured her so badly that she left her body. As she looked out she could see many impatient and angry drivers being kept from their destinations. From one car, though, she saw a large beam of light coming from the car into the woman's lifeless body. She was being prayed for, by a stranger. The woman in the wreck was so touched she traveled over to the car and looked at the license plate, vowing to remember it when she was well again. Soon thereafter she was pulled back into her body. Once she was able, she went through several months of rehab and healing. When she was well enough she looked up the woman who prayed for her and went to her house with flowers."
God logs our positive and negative thoughts.
Every moment, in various, unrelenting circumstances, there's a choice.
Prayer or worldliness.
In the highly popular new book, Imagine Heaven, Christian researcher John Burke relates the account of a young artist named Gary who lost control of his auto on a snowy winter evening and like the forementioned woman described leaving his body [see St. Paul's similar account in2 Corinthians 12:2) and in his case watching as icy water filled the car.
"I saw an ambulance coming, and I saw people trying to help me get me out of the car and to the hospital. At that time I was no longer in my body. I had left my body. I was probably a hundred or two hundred feet up and to the south of the accident, and I felt the warmth and the kindness of the people trying to help me... I also felt the source of all that sort of kindness or whatever, and it was very, very powerful."
The "source," of course, was God.
The light pulls us to Heaven and when we earn it with kindness, we ourselves emanate His Light during our brief, fleeting sojourn on this planet called earth.
[resources: Imagine Heaven, The Other Side, and What You Take To Heaven] Spirit Daily