Some people actually pray to win a huge chunk of cash in the lottery, which is understandable when you consider how many common problems would be instantly solved by a sudden infusion of $400 million into your personal account.
But I question the tactic of using prayer to ask God to reward you with helpful, timely interventions. One look at a day’s worth of woe as it unfolds in the news is enough to convince a sober observer that God doesn’t feel a particular sense of urgency about rescuing good people from calamities.
Besides, if there was a divine desire to make you rich, would God need to use the Lottery to do it? I don’t think so – not as long as we have Las Vegas and Wall Street and You Tube.
And as we’ve discussed here before, there is ample evidence that winning a huge jackpot could easily turn out to be the worst thing that has ever happened to you.
We have explored before what sort of language one might use when beseeching the deity for decent numbers, but there is infinite variety possible within every simple form. So with all that in mind, I went ahead and bought my single ticket for Wednesday’s Powerball while muttering this quiet prayer.
Now I play the Powerball,
I pray my numbers come up, all.
And if I become rich today,
I pray I won’t throw it away.
By partying until the dawn.
By buying yachts for hangers-on.
By funding every worthless scheme
presented as a noble dream.
By hanging out in seedy bars.
By buying worthless classic cars.
By sending distant kin abroad.
Investing in a mammoth fraud.
By launching my own space balloon.
By subsidizing Trail Baboon.
By backing bets my buddies cast
On horses that will finish last.
I pray, in short, for money smarts,
to add to all my other arts.
The wisdom and the sense to see
I shouldn’t play the lottery.
How to squander a fortune? Let us count the ways
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