Emails

Are you ever tempted to delete emails when you know it's likely to be a chain message or one of those tear-jerkers that have been circulating for years? I am. But when my dad sends one, I open it up because he forwards them infrequently, and when he does, he adds insight.

For instance, this morning, I'd already deleted the message once (a woman from his church has both me and Dad on her mailing list), but I opened his email with the same subject line, and sure enough, the note from him said, "Your mother prays with the faith that the little girl in this story has."

It's nice to hear things like that from and about your parents. But I get a couple of other lessons from it. One, that God sent us emails, OK, really books of the Bible, and they're the same messages that have been circulating for centuries, but we can still get insight from our Heavenly Father. The second lesson is that, maybe when we pray, God doesn't want to hear the rote, same old-same old, but a little personal message from us.

We had an interesting author on our talk show last year who had written about praying in different forms: with your drawing, your singing, your writing. The upshot was prayer didn't have to be spoken. So maybe I will email God. But it won't be a chain message.