“Thoughts and prayers.”
You want to “tick” someone off who’s going through some kind of horrible situation? Tell them your thoughts and prayers are with them. Maybe they’ve lost a child in a school shooting, or maybe they’ve been looking for work, and the time is up - the mortgage payment is due and they’re looking at actual homelessness.
And you offer prayers? Please.
It seems like the cheapest, most ineffective thing you could possibly offer in lieu of actual assistance. And you know what? It is the most useless thing as it’s offered by most people.
(That may seem like the most judgmental thing I could say, but…I’m pretty much out of energy to care these days.)
Look at the way it’s often said: “I’m sending prayers your way.” “My prayers are with you.” The sentiment is sincere, but the expression is, shall we say, not so authentic. You don’t “send prayers” to people. And is there anything more meaningless than “giving” someone some quiet, internal, words (if that) that you utter in solitude?
No.
It’s no wonder people hate “thoughts and prayers” after their children have been slaughtered in a public school. I don’t blame them a bit.
And this is, more or less, how I’ve regarded prayer my whole life. Just a sample of “unanswered prayers:”
Please tell me what I should do in college - and with my life…
Help me out of XYZ situation I got myself into…
Help me save my business…
Help heal my marriage…
Help me find a job…
And tomorrow, a big one: help us with a legal situation that will determine whether life becomes immeasurably harder, or if we get a brief reprieve from the financial struggle.
I was talking to my “exile hosts” yesterday about this. I have prayed for these things and many more for years. The answer to all of it seems to be “no.”
And yet, almost every morning I get up and “pray a rope.” It’s an Orthodox/Eastern Catholic practice similar to a rosary. It’s simple, because simple is all I can manage these days:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.”
Why do I do this?
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