Stuff I Don't Pray About

Tonight is one of my favorite nights of the year as the Department Chair of ACU's Department of Psychology (I know, hard to believe but I'm actually in charge of stuff. In fact, I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that I have a business card. They gave me a box of them awhile back, but I just use them as bookmarks.)

Tonight is the night when we take our graduating seniors and graduate students out to Perini Ranch for a celebratory dinner. For a graduation gift we give the seniors a copy of Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning (probably the #1 must read in psychology) signed by the faculty. It's special night.

But I was nervous all day because we were eating outside and the forecast was calling for rain. I called my administrative coordinator to check with Perini's about what we might do if it did rain. Nothing much, it turned about. So my admin coordinator signed off her email with "I guess we'll just have to pray that the weather holds off."

Normally, I'd have just read that line and moved on. But today my mind lingered on that sentiment, "I guess we'll just have to pray..."

Two thoughts went through my head. The first was that I wondered if my admin coordinator really meant for me to pray. Most likely she didn't. References to prayer, here in the Bible Belt of America, are very common. Almost idiomatic. That is, the statement "I guess we'll just have to pray" is generally the equivalent of "let's just hope" or "let's keep our fingers crossed." And I wondered if that is a good thing, about how in many Christian communities the reference to "prayer" is just a Christianized version of "keep your fingers crossed."

The other thought that went through my head is that when I read the words "I guess we'll just have to pray that the weather holds off" I knew, immediately, that I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't pray for the weather to hold off. Why? Because I don't pray for things like that.

And it struck me that I'm likely not alone in this. I expect that many of us have private and distinctive lists of stuff we don't pray about. I, for example, won't pray for the weather to change to save my Departmental dinner. It'll rain or it won't. But I'm not getting God involved. And I'm sure you have a list of stuff that you don't pray about.

Now a lot of the reasons why we might not pray for stuff is because we don't have faith. We don't think anyone's listening. We don't think prayer will make any difference.

But I also think, and this was the case today with the rain issues, that sometimes we don't pray about stuff because we don't think prayer should be used in that manner. That the request might be inappropriate, too trivial or too self-interested.

The point is, I have a list of stuff I don't pray about. Sometimes because I don't have faith, but oftentimes because I have this sense that a particular prayer is inappropriate. But I've never pondered, in any critical way, how those lists got made in the first place or if the lists are theologically coherent. The lists just seemed to have evolved. I know I have a list but am only vaguely aware about how it got made.