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Thoughts and Prayers Aren't What You Think

We each occasionally hear people giving other people a hard time for sending thoughts and prayers to the people involved in a tragedy.
Sitting around feeling sorry for someone else won't do any good any more than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. And when someone says that they're sending "thoughts and prayers" when they're really just sitting around feeling sorry for someone, they're not actually sending thoughts and prayers. When they're just going about their normal lives and not thinking about or praying for the victims of tragedy, that is obviously not sending thoughts and prayers.
But when someone is actually sending thoughts and prayers, that is a wonderful and essential part of helping people overcome both personal and public tragedy.
Prophets and Apostles have clarified for decades that true prayer requires acting on our prayers, not just wishing that God would do it all for us (Sources may include David A. Bednar's April 2006 Conference talk, the Bible Dictionary entry for "Prayer", and Bruce R. McConkie's January 1976 Ensign article).
Hopefully our thoughts will be centered not just on the terrible nature of the tragedy. That would just lead to believing that the world has less good in it than it really does. Hopefully our thoughts would center on how we can help people solve the problem.
Truly giving others our thoughts and prayers ought to lead to action, and action involving thoughts and prayers would probably be more effective than thoughtless and prayerless action.
Most importantly: Compassion is an essential part of solving problems. People will resist our attempts to help until they know that we're not trying to help them so we can pat ourselves on the back, but so that we can make their lives better. That was why the people of Sandy Hook refused to let Obama come in after the shooting. They didn't want Obama to make their tragedy into a pat on the back, or worse, a political agenda. Nobody wants selfish help. Especially in the case of personal or public tragedy, "people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care."
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