Our Praying Poem by Randy McClave

Is God tired of our praying
When empty words is all that we are saying,
We get down on our knees and then we pray
And we don't do anything, we just say.

I know that I am tired of saying prayers
They are just empty words without cares,
We just say them and nothing else will we do
I imagine that God is tired of them too.

We see a hungry man, so we get a hunch
We say a prayer, but we don't buy him a lunch,
We say we are sorry that he is starving and grim
Then we tell others that we had prayed for him.

We see a friend who's fighting depression
To say a prayer to him is our answer to his question,
We tell others how we are a great Christian
To him we said a prayer, but we did not listen.

We say prayers for the murdered black men
We also pray for the people that committed the sin,
But, we should scream and protest and create criticism
That we stand against bigotry and all racism.

We pray for the victims of sexual assault
We point no finger of guilt or give any fault,
And we refuse to deal with the misogyny of sexism
We show and commit to no centrism.

We pray for our LGBTQ communities when they are terrorized
But, we don't accept their beliefs, them we have not recognized,
So, we leave it all up to God as we say in a prayer
For them, we do not like and we don't even care.

We pray for our American Muslims who endure violence
But, from our preachers and politicians we hear silence,
We should be calling out the ignorant bigotry and hatred
But, we don't care, we again leave it to God to dictate.

We pray for all of the victims of mass shootings
But, we get more offended with robbery's and lootings,
But, to our politicians and not to God we should discuss
How and why it shouldn't be so simple for a weapon to purchase.

We should stop tossing hollow words into a mound
While we are standing upon the bloody ground,
While we drink latte from a recycled cup
Waiting for our prayers to God, to give us backup.

Praying for God to move and sitting still isn't redemptive
It is nothing more than being pre-emptive,
We just sit on the power line watching like a pigeon
We have created faith in an empty religion.

Do not think any sin or bad deed is out of our control
God, gave us all a brain and a will and a soul,
We must stop feeling so good about ourselves, for feeling bad
We as Christians, should all be mad.

We just want to always pass the buck unto God
We make him invisible or seen as a fraud,
He has given us here and now to reflect the character of Christ
Saying only a prayer, is cheaply priced.

We must do as what God has always commanded
To us with desire and need he has equipped and handed,
If our prayers won't change from self-righteousness and fear
We won't be delivered into heaven, but into a mirror.

The boldest prayers that we can utter in these days
Is the calling upon our faith, and not only giving praise,
We must love and serve and give and sacrifice and mourn
Then unto God we then are truly reborn.

Many of us want to be seen only in church
As though we are studying God or doing research,
Then we say our prayer and put money in the collection plate
Have we followed Jesus's teaching, or stopped hate.

Many hungry, hurting, brutalized people are full of terror and woe,
Just because God has not yet moved, that we all know,
No one should be invisible, disregarded, and seen as needy or poor
We all should just pray less, and then help more.

Randy L. McClave