Day 164 - Is the prayer strike working?

 

No reason to start praying again even if my prayer strike doesn’t seem to be working.

And I’m not inclined to apologise to the Almighty at the moment. To be honest, I feel he owes some of us an apology.

Pride, I’m sure.

You won’t find Christ apologizing for anything in the gospels (or, weirdly, saying please, or thanking anyone but his heavenly Father (basically thanking himself)). Not once. One might imagine that he would have apologized after bumping into someone in some crowd once or twice, or maybe he did a shoddy job on some piece of furniture and bodged the nail-work and had a run-in with a carpentry customer.

Who knows? As his followers conveniently (and often sycophantly) say today, ‘He’s got nothing to apologise for’. Or, if they are a little kinder, ‘You’re going to be waiting a long time if you expect God to apologise to you.’ Nothing, it seems, is impossible for God, except for that… and a few other things. Things like not letting brothers die too early.

But I don’t even want an apology (though it would be nice). I want God to answer my occasional past prayers. And they are and will remain between me and him, although I can say that some of them were not entirely selfish and were to make things better even for you, patient reader. Basically, one of the reasons I’m not praying is in order to get prayers answered (because praying definitely didn’t work).

I could have written a book about prayer. Or about my relationship with it. As I say, it is harder to stop praying than you may imagine. It sounds easy. Lazy even. After all, many people do not pray at all. But it isn’t that easy. The ex-Christians know this and sometimes write about it. That, and the lingering fear of an (agreed-by-me-to-be-unfair) … hell.

But I could have written a book on prayer. Except, why would anyone want to read a book on prayer by someone who has had so few answered? Let the prosperity preachers write their books about how God has made them rich and successful and how it has had nothing to do with the fact that they give love a bad name by fleecing their congregations.

Prayer is greedy like that. Always wanting more.

So, no prayers answered. The prayer-strike seems not to be working.

The Almighty doesn’t need my prayers; he’s made that clear. So, what is his problem?

As my prayers are so utterly useless, it doesn’t matter if I carry on with the strike then, does it?

It will end when the conditions have been met.