Tue 29 Dec 98 20:14
Marilyn Burge
Answered Prayer

I've been too ill to participate here, but thought you might enjoy my latest foray into answered prayer.

My brother called me yesterday to wish me a happy birthday (60th). I mentioned to him that I was spending nearly every minute in bed because of some chronic lung problems, which I then shared with him. He responded that he would pray for me.

Being too debilitated to argue effectively with him, I simply responded "I appreciate the thought."

He then felt a bit uneasy about my lack of adequate rebuttal, and felt prompted to reinforce his belief in prayer with a story about one of his sons, Vance, who is nearly 35 years old. Vance went back to school recently, and was trying to get into a Ph.D. program that he wanted very badly. Given his age, he feels a certain amount of pressure to get on with it, so he can get on with the rest of his life. He was called into his faculty advisor's office and informed that he had missed the last available slot in that program by a blond hair.

My brother asked him if he had prayed about it, and he replied "oh, Dad, the Lord isn't going to gigger somebody else's life around just so I can get into a grad program."

His father replied, "you don't know what god is willing to do. I suggest you pray and see what happens."

I'll be you know the ending of the story. One of the accepted candidates had to drop out at the last moment, and Vance was the next in line. He is now in the program.

I got to thinking about that, I it occurred to me that my brother's god had fucked up somebody else's plans, just because Vance had groveled and begged that he really, really wanted that program. I wondered who else's lives were fucked up just so Vance's prayers could get a 'yes' reply. Perhaps the other candidate's mother died and that's why he dropped out. Perhaps he ran out of money and had to drop out for that reason. I find it hard to think of any positive reason why the other fellow would have dropped out of the program, since he really, really wanted into it, too, or else he wouldn't have gone through all the hoops necessary to get selected.

Strange god, that Jehovah.