I don't remember this being in the BCP....

Well, the Yankees are playing the Mets in the Subway Series today and tomorrow....

This is not original with me, but I do wonder abut praying for a sports team to win. I'd like to think God is a Mets fan, but if so, wouldn't they always go 152-0? Is not God a fan of all God's people and their sports teams? And that gets me thinking about why we pray. At the beginning of this week, during the Rogation Days, we read from Luke 11:1-13, about how to pray. We're told, "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you." I don't think necessarily that intercessory prayer is wrong; after all, Jesus does encourage us to pray for our needs - look at vss. 5-8, for example. But the point of prayer isn't to change God, but to change us. Even when we pray for perhaps trivial things, like the Mets sweeping the Subway Series this weekend, it's us, by our willingness to be in relationship with God in prayer, who are being continually converted to the mind of Christ over time. We are the ones who change when we pray, not God. Ultimately, our best prayers are probably those that express our intention to be open to and strengthened to God's will in the world, but even less noble prayer is efficacious over time, it seems to me. Perhaps it's more the act of praying than the content of the prayer.

RFSJ