Indiana

Living On a Prayer

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

Tonight was one of those Council meetings that should have only lasted a couple minutes, but it didn’t!  It wasn’t the ad nauseum debate over whether the city should spend up to $500,000 on crime prevention grant monitors, but actually it was the opening prayer that did it for me.

It was CCC member Doris Minton McNeil’s turn to do the prayer.  McNeil has been charged with felony battery for allegedly shoving a police officer while intoxicated.   She invited her Pastor to lead the invocation, which is not out of the ordinary, but the fact that it took forever wasn’t.  I don’t attend church and now I remember why.

It’s one thing to ask the big man upstairs for guidance and wisdom, it’s another thing to ask him to watch for Minton McNeil because her enemies are out to get her.  I am not making this up.  Her Pastor also asked the Lord to “reign down justice,” whatever that means.  He also asked the Lord to give her strength.

Now in all fairness, in what seemed like the same amount of time it took the Lord to make the world, the Pastor did ask for other things, but I thought it was highly inappropriate to turn the occasion into an ecumenical get out of jail free card.

I always chuckle how people call for Jesus when they screw up.  Maybe had they been talking to him before they decided to engage in counterproductive behavior, they would have avoided the mess they got into.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on October 06, 2008 (boomark / email).