Prayers and such

My son-in-law, Brett, wrote an intriguing blog about intercessory prayer at http://sheepdays.wordpress.com/. Both the blog and the comments afterwards are fascinating. All the writers concerned are experts in theology. I am not. I was lucky enough to have had some very wonderful church experiences and one of them was a lesson from a youth minister when I was a ninth grader in Connecticut in 1963. The pastor's name has long since been forgotten but his lesson probably set the course for my life concerning prayer. The lesson was through the following charming story.

Once there was a man who went to visit heaven. He was being taken around the various areas and came to a gigantic switch board that was being run by harried angels who had old-fashioned headsets. They were busily connecting and disconnecting cords as lights blinked frantically. The man asked about the lights on the switchboard. There were red, yellow and green lights. "It looks like traffic lights, " the man commented.

"Yes, " sighed the angel.

"Mostly red, I see," the man pointed towards the board.

"You see there is a color coded system for the prayers. The red lights are the asking prayers."

"Oh, " the man said. "I guess that's what most prayers are; people asking God for things."

"That's true," the angel shook his head. "Everybody wants something from God."

"What about the other lights, the green and yellow?"

"Well, the green, the few of them you see, " he swept his hand across the board, " are prayers of thanks."

"What about the couple of yellow lights?"

" Oh, the yellow, " the angel smiled wistfully, " those are prayers of praise."


So I learned early on to make sure my prayers were of the praising and thanking kind.