Prayer: Yay or Nay?

Dictionary definition of to “pray”: Act of communicating with a deity especially as a petition or in adoration or contrition or thanksgiving.
Ambrose Bierce's “Devil’s Dictionary” definition of to “pray”: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Up until last month, I subscribed to Ambrose Bierce’s definition of prayer. That was until I drove my husband’s ancient piece of crap Toyota after dark. I didn’t want my children chauffeured around in this death trap so I sent them up to visit my in-laws in my new Nissan Sentra. I’m not sure which I missed more…my children or my car. So I was left with this old car that used to be nice when I bought it in the mid-90’s. Didn’t think it was going to be too bad until I got in and noticed about 650 tree air fresheners scattered around, the seatbelt was broken and I had a minute amount of fuel and that was just before I turned it on. Upon ignition I noticed some pretty unsettling noises. I was warned about some strange noises when you turn the corner, but this seemed excessive. Accelerating seemed to cause the most trouble with a lot of clanking and shaking…decelerating lead to kind of a scraping and swaying and then braking caused a pretty severe grinding. It was daytime when I left on my adventure and the windshield seemed pretty dirty, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Until it was nighttime and I couldn’t see anything! To my horror, my super responsible husband had no wiper fluid in the car. Nothing. Luckily I left with a container of water to drink on the ride home and I had to use that to clean the windshield on the side of the road. Which, of course, froze almost immediately. After a few moments of maximum defrost I was on my way again. The chant “please GOD get me home” ran through my head on a continuous loop. It’s deer season and I just had a feeling I needed to stay in the left lane rather than moving over to the right lane where my turn is. Had I not done that, I would have hit a deer standing exactly in the middle of the right lane…with no seatbelt and grinding brakes. So, power of prayer…coincidence or is there something to this? Or maybe it’s just like my grandma used to say “always follow your hunches!”