In prayer, does volume count?

I hate late night phone calls. They are almost never good news.

"Hello?" I said.

"This is Sara. We have a parishioner in the emergency room at Valley Hospital. She suffered a stroke and she's not expected to make it through the night. Will you visit her and administer Last Rites?"

Since I'm pretty much dead last on the call list of Episcopal priests to make hospital visits, I figured the A-Team had already been tried to no avail. "I'm on the way," I said.

Gathering the accoutrements for the task, I drove to the hospital and quickly found the woman's room. At first I didn't immediately recognize the woman's name. But seeing her face, I remembered her as a quiet, intelligent woman transplanted to Las Vegas from the Midwest. She lay unconscious in bed, eyes closed but breathing regularly and unassisted. I touched her hand and spoke her name.

"It's Father Frederick," I said. I'm going to say some prayers for you, give you a blessing and anoint you with oil."

And so I did.

After speaking with the floor nurse, I left the woman alone in her room, knowing that the church's pastoral care team had her on their prayer list and someone would be by soon.

Later, as I reflected on the woman and the idea that people were praying for her, I was reminded of one of the more remarkable statements made thus far in the race for the White House. Even though it came only a few weeks ago, it has already disappeared from the national discussion. Most in the media, who get kind of squeamish covering faith-related topics anyway, gave the story a quick "too bad, so sad" visit before moving on to the Don Imus story. And now we have the sudden death of televangelist Jerry Falwell to keep us busy.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic candidate John Edwards, announced that her breast cancer had returned. It had spread to her bones. The outlook was discouraging.

All of the other candidates and many people -- Republicans and Democrats -- expressed sympathies and said they would pray for her. Organizations started prayer chains, encouraging as many people as possible -- can we get 1 million people? -- to pray for her comfort and a cure.

That's a natural human response.

Elizabeth Edwards' take on the situation, however, was extraordinary and far from the natural human reaction. She said that while she appreciated the support, she would not be asking God to intervene and cure her. She said she does not expect God to exclude her from the natural order of things.

This suggests to me that Elizabeth Edwards has a firmer grasp on faith than most.

I hope no one gets the wrong idea. It's good that people wish and pray Mrs. Edwards well in her fight against cancer.

But if people think that Edwards' prominence or social status or wealth, along with the sheer number of prayers for her, puts her any higher on God's mind than, say, this little old woman I saw alone in her hospital room at Valley Hospital, then they've made the nature of God into something strange.

Now look, don't look to me for too many answers. I may have firm conviction about public integrity, and I may sound cocksure about the state of our roads, taxes and government budgets, but I don't have many answers when it comes to the nature of the faith universe. That's why I'm more a newspaperman than a priest.

But, I think I know this: The power of God is not something to be called down as if we were part of a cosmic game of "American Idol."

Edwards gets that.

At the end of the day, no matter how many votes or text messages of support we get, none of us is expected to make it through the night.

Brain lapse

In last week's column I mentioned the Larry Ruvo Brain Institute. It's actually the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute. Larry Ruvo is the founder of Keep Memory Alive and a benefactor of the institute. Lou is his father.

Thankfully, if anyone is going to understand my brain lapse, it's going to be the good folks at the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute. Sign me up.

Sherman Frederick is publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media. Readers may write him at sfrederick@reviewjournal.com.