Here’s a bit of news which could get you thinking. In Atlantic City, New Jersey, a man and his son retreived a bag from the water, filled with written prayers to the Lord. The AP reports:
Many of the letters were addressed to the Rev. Grady Cooper, though many more simply said “Altar.” According to the text of several of them, they were intended to be placed on a church’s altar and prayed over by the minister, the congregation or both.
A card in the bag identified Rev. Cooper as an associate pastor at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Jersey City. The AP learned that he died two years ago, but was unable to learn anything more from the church or locate his family.
The letters represent the hard and silly things we pray for, those of us who know little about the God we claim to worship and those of us who know him intimately. It’s interesting news, but it feels voyeuristic to read the concerns of unknown people in an AP story.
That’s a little sad…
I have a relative who sends in ‘prayer requests’ to some christian group. (With a check of course.) I’ve always wondered (and suspected) if they just ended up in the trash. Now I guess I know.
Now that you say that, I should say I work for a ministry that receives prayer requests from lots of people we know and many we don’t. We put them all on a list and look over them at least once a week. I’m sure the people who take the requests pray for them at the time they get them, but there are several requests that pass me by. But that’s just me. As an organization, we try to pray for every request in order to be true to our word.