{"id":724,"date":"2007-07-03T04:48:54","date_gmt":"2007-07-03T09:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=724"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:38:20","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:38:20","slug":"be-careful-what-you-pray-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=724","title":{"rendered":"Be Careful What You Pray For"},"content":{"rendered":"
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He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.<\/p>\n

–Matthew 5:45<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Some of you may not know this, but Alabama Governor Bob Riley proclaimed this week “Days of Prayer for Rain”<\/a> and asked all citizens to pray both individually and in their houses of worship for our drought to end. The predictable peals of derisive laughter came from the usual suspects<\/a>, but it was business as usual in the Bible Belt.<\/p>\n

According to yesterday’s Huntsville Times<\/em>, it worked!<\/a> Well, sorta.<\/p>\n

I chuckled when I saw the headline and thought of that movie Bruce Almighty<\/em> in which people prayed for things that they wanted or thought they needed, but the answers to their prayers often had unforeseen consequences. I love good crops and green lawns as much as the next guy, but power outages and car crashes are another matter altogether!<\/p>\n

Alabamians pray for rain to start and Texans and Oklahomans pray for it to stop. Men of God in distant lands, on the other hand, apparently see their particular abundance of rain as God’s punishment for disobeying his commands.<\/a> I might expect this from certain U.S.-based evangelists, but I was a little surprised to read such sentiments from men wearing miters and vestments and carrying shepherd’s staffs.<\/p>\n

Rain. Blessing or curse? Well, that depends on who you talk to these days.<\/p>\n

I guess you really do have to be careful what you pray for. Or maybe you just pray and hope for the outcome that does the most good and benefits the most people, knowing that a few will fall through the cracks. Or maybe just, “Thy will be done.” There’s an idea!<\/p>\n

I don’t know, it’s all very confusing to me. I’m glad I’m just an optometrist.<\/p>\n

“Which is better, one or two?”<\/p>\n

Now that<\/em> I can understand.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. –Matthew 5:45 Some of you may not know this, but Alabama Governor Bob Riley proclaimed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,76,20,75,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eyes","category-faith","category-huntsville","category-prayer","category-scripture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9579,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions\/9579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}