I was particularly disturbed by several things, they are highlighted in orange.
The email started out...
Just wanted to tell everyone that I am so grateful to have each of you in my life. I pray you all have a blessed day.
It was difficult for me to decide who I thought would DO this because many people claim to pray, but not everyone does. I hope I chose the right twelve. Please send this back to me (You'll see why). May everyone who received this message be blessed.
There are 12 months/ 12 disciples/ 12 tribes of Israel / Jesus' birth celebrated in twelfth month.There is nothing attached. Just send this to twelve others. Prayer is one of the best free gifts we receive. There is no cost, just a lot of reward. Make sure you pray, in the name of Jesus, believing God will answer.
There are 12 months/ 12 disciples/ 12 tribes of Israel / Jesus' birth celebrated in twelfth month.There is nothing attached. Just send this to twelve others. Prayer is one of the best free gifts we receive. There is no cost, just a lot of reward. Make sure you pray, in the name of Jesus, believing God will answer.
May today be all you need it to be.
May the peace of God and the freshness of the Holy Spirit rest in your thoughts,
rule in your dreams tonight, and conquer all your fears.
May God manifest himself today in ways you have never experienced.
May your joys be fulfilled, and your prayers be answered.
I pray that faith enters a new height for you;
I pray that your territory is enlarged.
I pray for peace, healing, health, happiness, prosperity,
joy, true and undying love for God.
Now send this to 12 people within 5 minutes and remember to send this back.... I count as 2, you'll see why.Suggestion: copy and paste rather than forward
1- It was difficult for me to decide who I thought would DO this because many people claim to pray, but not everyone does. Manipulation much!
2-There are 12 months/ 12 disciples/ 12 tribes of Israel / Jesus' birth celebrated in twelfth month.Say what? So 12 is a holy because... the 12 disciples (some would say 13, you know w/Paul), okay I'll give you this one, but you started out with 12 because of the twelve months in a year. Evidently you thought the twelve months of the year were passed down to Moses on that other set of stone tablets. We base our monthly system on the old Roman calendar (with some updates.) Which they formed from the seasons, stars and their superstition about even numbers. Come on!
Then you add in that Jesus' birth is celebrated in the twelfth month... twelve is so cool! Ugh! Christians (and yes I am one of them, in case you were wondering) took over the Roman holiday Saturnalia and the northern European holiday Yule. Both of these pagan holidays were during the winter solstice and had major partying and festivities. We just added Christian meaning to justify our own celebration (okay I do believe Christmas is still special and a wonderful commemoration of our Savior's birth, but puh-lease!). Please don't mix and match the holy with the meaningless and then deem it all meaningful!
3-Prayer is one of the best free gifts we receive. There is no cost, just a lot of reward.
How can you say prayer is free? I believe as I hope do you, that Christ died to save us from our sins. That gives us freedom. Freedom to commune with God and commune eternally (heaven). So prayer, communication with God, is at the very least worth the life of God's only son. I could also extrapolate that to the many men, women and children who have been killed over the centuries for the right to pray to our God. So come on people that's like saying freedom is free! Then they tack on the last statement about no cost and reward and you have the American dream: getting something for nothing. Presto chango, it's all good. Bah!
4-Make sure you pray, in the name of Jesus, believing God will answer.
My beef with this is that it sounds like a warning that your fairy godmother would give you right before you stepped into your enchanted pumpkin. Or maybe the perfect ending to a spell for an enchanted life. Just like every good Disney movie, if you believe something hard enough dreams do come true. Either way, don't you know the people to whom you are sending this email. I mean you thought about it really hard right (see number 1)? So you should know if those twelve are praying to God in his son's name or to Allah.
5- Suggestion: copy and paste rather than forward
Oh, that's good! Real good! That way unsuspecting people, like myself, who tend to just delete forwards in general are caught and start to read this diluted chain prayer letter. Then they get angry and spend two hours dissecting it, then ranting about it on their blog. Okay, I do realize most people didn't do that.
The sad thing is I really did like the prayer. In fact I cleaned it up, getting rid of all the malarkey and sent it to some of my friends. And I'm hoping that the less diluted version blessed them.
Rantings aside, I understand the why of sending these emails. I just wish we'd read them and take the time to clear them up a bit before sending them on. They are after all messengers with our names on them.
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