Advice From God

Dear God,

Do you ever really answer our prayers?

- Yusef

Yusef,

Do you ever answer the front door when a dog barks outside? Do you ever open the refrigerator for the ants on your kitchen counter? Do you ever restrain yourself from using antibacterial soap when you know that there are germs on your hands? Do you ever turn off your porch light when you see moths dashing their soft bodies against it on a summer evening?

- God

Dear God,

I’m a forty year-old father of three. I love my family, and I want to do well by them, but I’m about at the end of my rope.

I’ve been working long hours at my job for years now, always feeling that I’m on the verge of achieving financial success. Just when I think I have financial stability in grasp, an unanticipated cost comes up, and I have to put my nose back to the grindstone again.

I want to make sure that my family is provided for, but I’m exhausted. What can I do to overcome my fatigue and re-energize my professional life to finally attain the success I’ve been working toward for so long?

- Eugene

Eugene,

When I get feeling blue, or a little bit lost, or not sure what to do next, I always invent a new religion. I find someone to be my special prophet for a few years, and give that person magical powers to impress the little people and get them to pay attention. Then, the followers of the new religion give me extra-special enthusiastic worship, convinced that they’re going to change the world. The prophets rarely survive for longer than five or ten years, but the believers keep on worshipping me in a new, jim dandy kind of way that makes me feel all rosy inside again.

Oh, wait. I forgot. You’re not omnipotent. That must explain why you’re tired all the time.

Hm. Have you tried pulling yourself up by your bootstraps?

- God