Prayer Central

Heaven was more beautiful than John could imagine. As he wandered around the streets of gold, he came to this huge, modern looking complex. John saw an angel, bent over a computer-like devise, but it far more advanced than John had ever seen. He cleared his throat and greeted the angel.

“Hi,” said John.

“Hi, John. Welcome to Prayer Central.”

“What’s Prayer Central?”

“When you were don earth, did you ever wonder how God heard all those prayers? Well, this is how.” The angel was happy to answer John’s many questions.

The scene was unbelievable. The computer desks formed a huge circle. At each desk, an angel sat. The angel would grab a piece of paper looking substance from a printer, jump up, run down a hallway and turn into a doorway, which was marked by a sign. There were hundreds of hallways, forming spokes that came off a hub.

“How does this work?” John asked.

“It’s really quite simple,” said the angel. “The prayers come pouring in, thousands per second. The angels take them and put each on it categories in those doorways, down those halls.”

“Can I see the doorways?”

“Of course! You might even find some of your prayers. Let’s take a look.” They walked down a hallway. There were hundreds of doorways on either side of the hall. The angel stopped at one. The room was almost overflowing with glowing papers.

“This is our most popular, the Bed Time and Dinner Time Recited Prayers.” John looked in the doorway and saw some words flashing. “Oh, I recognize that one. Now I lay me down to sleep…,”said John. “That’s our most popular one,” said the angel. “Here’s another one that we get lots of, “God is great, God is good, now we thank Him for our food.” On the other side of the room, John saw stacks and stacks of the Lord’s Prayer.

As they continued down the hall, they saw another doorway marked, “Kid’s Prayers.” John looked inside and saw race cars, ponies, even Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. He even saw Willie Mays.” John laughed. The angel laughed too. “That’s your prayer John,” he said. “Yep” said John, “I prayed every night when I was a kid that I would be Willie Mays. I guess God didn’t hear that one did He?”

“Don’t be silly John,” said the angel. “You coached baseball for your church league didn’t you? You were a great influence on a lot of kids. You showed them God’s love in many ways. God often answers our prayers differently than what we expect.”

There was a hallway marked, “Illness.” The doorways had names of specific types of cancers and some illnesses that John hadn’t seen before. The angel told him these were diseases that haven’t been discovered on earth yet. These rooms were pretty full of prayers.

They walked down another hall and found some rooms that were nearly empty. One room was marked “Confession of sin.” John was confused. “No one seems to confess their sins anymore.” said the angel.” How are people going to see God’s forgiveness in their lives if they don’t confess their sins?” There were other nearly empty rooms with names like “Praising God,” and “Thanksgiving.”

“What about that room? said John. That one is almost empty”.

“That one is “Prayer for Someone’s Salvation.” People on earth pray mostly for people’s earthly illnesses and world problems. They forget the biggest problem in the world, sin.”

“Wow,” said John, someone should go back and tell people to check their prayer life and
Get more balance.”

Somebody has!