Unanswered prayers

Just the other night at a hometown football game

My wife and I ran into my old high school flame

And as I introduced them, the past came back to me

And I couldn't help but think 

    of the way things used to be

She was the one that I'd wanted for all times

And each night I'd spend prayin' 

    that God would make her mine

And if he'd only grant me 

    this wish I wished back then

I'd never ask for anything again

Sometimes I thank God 

For unanswered prayers

Remember when you're talkin' 

To the man upstairs

That just because he doesn't answer 

    doesn't mean he don't care

'Cause some of God's greatest gifts 

Are unanswered prayers

She wasn't quite the angel 

That I remembered in my dreams

And I could tell that time had changed me

In her eyes too it seemed

We tried to talk about the old days

There wasn't much we could recall

I guess the Lord knows 

    what he's doin' after all

And as she walked away 

Well I looked at my wife

And then and there I thanked the Good Lord

For the gifts in my life

Sometimes I thank God 

For unanswered prayers

Remember when you're talkin' 

To the man upstairs

That just because he may not answer 

    doesn't mean he don't care

'Cause some of God's greatest gifts 

Are unanswered

Some of God's greatest gifts 

Are all too often unanswered

Some of God's greatest gifts

Are unanswered prayers

++++++++++++

A long time ago, more decades than years, I stopped singing and listening to country and western, we used to call it hillbilly music, because so much of it’s maudlin*, a downer, leaving me sad, blue, melancholy, and I don’t like to go there. But this song, which fit so well into Fr Steve’s sermon this morning, and which he played to close the 10:30 streamed online worship service, is of decent theology. In fact, it’s even like the gospels, as Garth Brooks sings it, with a scenario that the evangelist constructs built around a central message that comes from oral tradition. In this case the simple theological assertion “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”. And you build a gospel story around it.

Here’s the song in Youtube, in case you’d like to hear Garth Brooks sing it again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GuA5PZx3K4

T+

* maudlin, a word that comes from the British pronunciation of Mary Magdalene (they sound it Mary Maudlin), because of the popular image of her as a sad person, brokenhearted, tearfully sentimental, weeping in the garden where she came to Jesus' tomb and found his body missing.