{"id":437,"date":"2007-09-30T14:29:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-30T14:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2007\/09\/when-you-havent-got-a-prayer.html"},"modified":"2007-09-30T14:29:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-30T14:29:00","slug":"when-you-havent-got-a-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/09\/when-you-havent-got-a-prayer.html","title":{"rendered":"When You Haven&#8217;t Got a Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First a prayer for folks over 50 who are cranky, then a story about prayer which will make you think, hopefully.<\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"font-family:Comic Sans MS;font-size:130%;color:red\"><span style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%;font-weight: bold;font-size: 14.5pt;color: red;font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'\"><span class=\"EC_apple-style-span\">&#8212; THE SENILITY PRAYER : Grant me the senility  to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones  I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/b><b><span style=\"font-family:Comic Sans MS;font-size:130%;color:black\"><span style=\"background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%;font-weight: bold;font-size: 14.5pt;color: black;font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'\"><br \/><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<br \/>A voyaging ship was wrecked during a storm<br \/>at sea and only two of the  men on it were<br \/>able to swim to a small, desert like island.<\/p>\n<p>The two survivors, not knowing what else to<br \/>do,agree that they  had no other recourse<br \/>but to pray to God. However, to find out<br \/>whose prayer was more powerful, they<br \/>agreed to divide the territory  between them<br \/>and stay on opposite sides of the island.<\/p>\n<p>The first thing the first man prayed for<br \/>was food. The next morning, the  first man<br \/>saw a fruit-bearing tree on his side of the<br \/>land, and  he was able to eat its fruit.<\/p>\n<p>The other man&#8217;s parcel of land  remained<br \/>barren.<\/p>\n<p>After a week, the first man was lonely  and<br \/>he decided to pray for a wife. The next<br \/>day, another ship  was wrecked, and the only<br \/>survivor was a woman who swam to his  side<br \/>of the land.<\/p>\n<p>On the other side of the  island,there was<br \/>nothing.<\/p>\n<p>Soon the first man prayed for  a house,<br \/>clothes, more food. The next day, like<br \/>magic,all of  these were given to him.<\/p>\n<p>However,the second man still had  nothing.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the first man prayed for a ship,  so<br \/>that his wife and he could leave the island.<br \/>In the morning,  he found a ship docked at<br \/>his side of the island.<\/p>\n<p>The  first man boarded the ship with his wife<br \/>and decided to leave the second  man on the<br \/>island. He considered the other man unworthy<br \/>to  receive God&#8217;s blessings,since none of his<br \/>prayers had been  answered.<\/p>\n<p>As the ship was about to leave, the first man<br \/>heard a voice from Heaven booming,<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Why are you leaving your  companion on the island?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My blessings are mine alone, since I  was the one<br \/>who prayed for them,&#8221; the first man answered.<br \/>&#8220;His  prayers were all unanswered, and so he does<br \/>not deserve  anything.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You are mistaken!&#8221; the voice rebuked him.<br \/>&#8220;He had only one prayer, which I answered.<br \/>If not for that, you would  not have received<br \/>any of my blessings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Tell me,&#8221; the  first man asked the voice,<br \/>&#8220;what did he pray for that I should owe  him<br \/>anything?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He prayed that all your prayers be  answered.&#8221;<br \/>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>For all we know, our blessings are not the<br \/>fruits of our prayers alone, but those of<br \/>another praying for  us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First a prayer for folks over 50 who are cranky, then a story about prayer which will make you think, hopefully. &#8212; THE SENILITY PRAYER : Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>When You Haven&#039;t Got a Prayer - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/09\/when-you-havent-got-a-prayer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When You Haven&#039;t Got a Prayer - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"First a prayer for folks over 50 who are cranky, then a story about prayer which will make you think, hopefully. &#8212; 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}