Just found a slim book, in a jacket pocket: a freebie I must have picked up from somewhere. It’s called Try Praying. On the first page I read that “God knows what you think and is aware of all you do. You can talk to him about anything”. That’s got to be a rather strange and one-sided conversation, even if there really is someone ‘up there’, since you can’t tell God anything he doesn’t already know, and he already knows the contents of your thoughts. Is God really going to listen to your gripes? Since he already knows what you’re going to say, will he be tempted to finish your sentences for you?
All four gospel writers are in agreement about prayer (though not much else). Prayer works! Whatever you ask for, in Jesus’s name, you get! It sounds too good to be true - and of course it is - though you have to read the small print in the Terms & Conditions of the divine enterprise before you see that the offer is entirely conditional on you becoming your most abject and submissive self. Oh, and if prayer doesn't seem to work, you can be sure that the fault is yours.
Licenced today: Furness Abbey, near Barrow-in-Furness, South Lakeland…
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