OPENING
A BAG OF PRAYERS

Topics: Faith; Grace; Help from God; Waiting on God

References: Job 30:20; Matthew 10:29–31; Luke 12:6–7; 18:1–8; 2 Corinthians 12:8–10; Ephesians 6:18; 1 John 5:14–15

Bill Lacovara was fishing near Atlantic City, New Jersey, when he spotted a plastic bag floating in the water. Inside he found about 300 requests for prayer that had been mailed to a local pastor. Most of the letters were unopened. The pastor had died two years earlier, and authorities speculated that the letters had been dumped as garbage after his house was cleaned out.

Some of the prayers were frivolous. “I’m still praying to hit the lottery—twice,” wrote one man. “First $50,000—then, after some changes have taken place—let me hit the millionaire.”

Many of the letters were heartbreaking. They came from anguished spouses, children, and widows, all crying out to God. Some prayed for relatives who were using drugs, gambling, or cheating on them. One man wrote from prison, saying that he was innocent and wanted to be back home with his family. A teenager poured out her heart on yellow, lined paper, begging God to forgive her and asking for a second chance. “Lord, I know that I have had an abortion, and I killed one of your angels,” she wrote. “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the mistake I made.”

Lacovara felt sad that so many prayers had been tossed away unheeded. “How many letters like this all over the world aren’t being opened or answered?” he wondered. “There are hundreds of lives here, a lot of struggle, washed up on the beach.”

—Wayne Perry, Associated Press, “Letters to God End Up in Ocean, Unread” (November 3, 2006)