God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh ~ Voltaire
Ever noticed how people in the law enforcement business always sound so formal when they are talking on television? To wit, “The suspect entered the premises and proceeded to assail the victim as the witness appeared too non-committal to the aforementioned incident... wha? Who talks like that? Unless you are Thurston Howell III, how many times per day you think you would use the word aforementioned?
There are another group of people that talk in "uber-formality" - the religious community. I was in church on Sunday and heard the following prayer, “Dear Lord. Please remain with us in our day and in our lives. Keep evil from us. Help the afflicted (afflicted?). Lord we know we are full of sin and we are here today to ask you to purge these impurities from our life and help us to remain vigilant in our quest to follow in your footsteps. Now I am not here to blaspheme and Lord knows (woops!) I need as much church and prayer as the next guy, but this is the 21st century. Do we really have to talk to God like we are…I don’t know…filling out police report?
I decided that when I pray from now on, I am going to keep it real. And just to prove I am a man of my word, I will leave you with my first blog prayer:
Dear Lord. How is it going? Things are pretty good here. Sweden is a nice country and my boys are doing good. Thank you for them by the way...they are miracles… but I guess you knew that. By the way it is still amazing that you gave your son to us. Don’t ask me to do that. I couldn’t. Seriously…don’t ask. God. Lots of people I know have Cancer. Help them. Help US to help them. Give our research guys a nudge in the right direction. The world would be a better place without the “C” disease. Lord. Help Christians and Muslims find some common ground. As long as we are at each other’s throats, the world is going to be a less fun place to be. Ok? We can talk about world hunger tomorrow. Good talking to you and I mean that.
Your pal and sometimes prodigal son,
Dwight
PS – I have been a bit inspired by a book called “Lamb” – The Gospel According to Biff.
1 comment:
I enjoyed that. Best, Matthew
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