Saturday, October 22, 2005

How to work miracles

Yet again my heart is not quite in doing this. The search for another place to live has been draining and being unemployed has not helped my prospects. I don't know what I'm going to do. I need help and I'm not sure where to get it. I know I've been harping on about it but it's a terrifying thing to me. I've never faced anything quite like this before and being evicted to me means likely being out on the streets.

The reckoning for me is coming and I find despite my natural tendencies to want to avoid it, I simply can't. I just hope I can sort things out before I get kicked out. Although I've tried to remain upbeat and positive for the reader I have, this is becoming more and more difficult right now. It is an emotional as well as rational crisis for me. Normally I'd turn to prayer in situations like this, but prayer only goes so far.

It was Benjamin Franklin, one of my favorite forefather, who said “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.” Prayer is fine up to a point, but it does not replace action. I'll go into my theories of how prayer works.
Now, I hope you'll forgive me for saying that prayer is a magical act. If you want to replace it with a more acceptable word to you, I will not stop you. The fact is we are asking what is in essence a supernatural entity for aid. We may not be engaging in Merlin type stuff of working our will on the universe, but we asking for His will to be exerted on our behalf.

Look at it this way. If you have transgendered feelings and are of a religious bent of any sort, I'm willing to bet you prayed to be turned into the opposite gender hoping for some sort of overnight transformation or maybe even a horrible accident that would remove the offending parts. Did this ever happen? More than likely it did not. I've learned that God does not work that way, nor can I expect him to work on a time schedule that is convenient to us. Nor can we expect him to work obvious miracles.

I'm not saying miracles don't happen, because they do, but we should not expect God to come down and solve our problems for us. Having the support and aid of others can be a great comfort and makes me wish I had found a church of any sort to attend regularly, at least I'd have the social support to fall back on. Miracles often happen through the work of other people and when given the opportunity, we should work what “miracles” we can for others. I suppose the best example of what I am talking about is a movie that came out a few years ago called Dear God.

I don't know if you've seen the movie, but high comedy is not. The whole premise of the movie is that a con artist is forced to find a real job and manages to land one at the post office's dead letter office. He accidentally males money for his loan shark to an apartment after answering a letter to God. After going to the building where the tenants are striking and desperately trying to get his money back he decides he doesn't have the heart to go through with it after all.

Now the movie could have ended there, but his coworkers decide that his motives actually were to try to help people and they set up a whole scheme designed to answer God's mail. Eventually, he does get in trouble for it, but by that time he actually is doing it because helping people makes him feel better. Well, I won't give away the ending for you, because the movie isn't a classic and some people might want to go rent it after reading this, but it's worth picking up. Although I have not described it as high comedy (which for me would be things like MASH, The Life of Brian, The Quest For the Holy Grail, and The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy), it is funny.

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