Nov 12, 2011
Say a Little Prayer for You
As I mentioned before, I recently got some wonderful news. Without Facebook accounts (gasp!), my wife and I don’t have the convenience of info-bombing all of our friends and relatives at once, so we’re sharing the news the old fashioned way: calling people up, meeting people in grocery aisles, work cubicles, walking down the street, etc. (It’s actually kind of fun to retell the tale for the umpteenth time, but perhaps this means we’re vain, attention-hogs, you know?) Last week, during the upteenth-and-one rehashing, an acquaintance interrupted, smiling, and said, “You know, we’ve been keeping you in our prayers this whole year, just hoping things would work out for you.”
I responded with the reflexive “thanks”, finished the pleasantries, and went on my way. I only did the figurative double take later that evening when I was rehashing the story of my rehashing of the news to my wife (we’re loads of fun to talk to, apparently – reruns all day, every day!)
I firmly believe there are two types of people in this world who use some variation of the phrase, “I’m praying for you.” There are people who use the phrase when hearing some bad news. These are people who don’t know what else to say, but want to be comforting. I like this use of the phrase. I’m okay with it. To me, it’s analogous to saying, “I’m sorry,” or, “I’m thinking of you.” Then there are people who use the phrase in some sort of bizarre attempt to steal thunder. These are people who take credit for others’ successes, or just want a little bit of the spotlight to shift in their direction: “Hey, Packers, nice Super Bowl you played there. I was praying for you.”
I believe my acquaintance’s comment falls in the latter category. To be clear, I wasn’t irritated with this acquaintance, more baffled than anything. After all, as a commenter pointed out in my last post, I’m an apostate! Do apostates only get blessings because the good, godly folk are watching their backs? Hmm. It sounds more to me like good things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. I think that should be a bumper sticker. Or maybe a picket sign. I will bestow 10 prayers or 2 indulgences to the person who can come up with a pithier/rhyming way to say this!