It’s another late night drive home from the hospital and my thoughts are filled with the recent passing of a close friend. His death was one of those moments that truly tested me as a minister, bringing with it many memories of when I was a seminary student in hospital chaplin training.

The training’s purpose was to help you figure out what’s going to push your buttons and to learn how to work through it before you become a minister. But for me this experience was somehow different from what I had faced as a minister, this was the chink in my armor.

So many times before I’ve stood alongside family members as their loved ones have been removed from life support. I’ve talked, laughed, cried, and prayed with others, even when in their pain they’ve fought to muster the words, “I can’t imagine what we would pray for, he’s dying.” My reply then was, “Yes, but I was thinking that I’d pray for you.”

This time though was somehow different. This time it was me who was saying goodbye to someone who, and whose family, I knew had no belief in God. But he was a friend and I would still offer my prayers, if only to be rebuked by their question, “If there is nothing to ask for, why pray?”

I found myself struggling to gather the strength as a reminder of the words that have brought strength to me at similar times in the past. “When there are no miracles to be had, what would one pray for?” Until finally those words of comfort sang to me their peace once more. “If the only prayer you ever said was ‘Thank you,’ that would be enough.”

And then like so many times before, for so many others I prayed, if only within myself, “Thank you.” Thank you for the life of this man, for his peaceful transition, for his children’s lives, and the chance that they had to say goodbye and know that they were loved. I prayed for strength for them, as they faced life without their father, their son, and their brother. I prayed for compassion for them, as they comforted each other, and were supported by their friends.

I know that their beliefs, unlike many of the patients I’ve met in the hospital, didn’t include God. Not as God is to me, a Divine Consciousness, a creative force in the universe found in all things, including relationships between people. Not as God as a supreme deity, Granter of Life and Death. There was no belief that after death, they would be reunited with God and their loved ones in heaven, and that the cares of this world will fall away. If only it had been that simple. There was only a rhetorical question from his parents, “You’re telling us if faith is strong enough, God will answer prayers. Where does that leave us when our son dies?”

I knew that there was no acceptable answer for the “Why?” question: why evil exists, or why anyone’s child gets cancer. But what I can do is to sit with someone who is going through unimaginable pain, and just be. It doesn’t make it better. But just maybe, they can see God’s loving presence in me; and that, too, is my prayer.

Rev. Steven McClain is Pastor of the New River Valley Metaphysical Chapel in Radford.