church softball prayer

I had a random flashback the other day. I thought about playing church softball...some of the fun we had...some of the tourneys we played in...those were good times. And I think back to the pre-game prayer. Since it was men's church softball, we would huddle with the other team around home plate and have a quick word of prayer before the game. It was always the same prayer: "Dear Lord, thank you for this beautiful day you've given us (even if a thunderstorm was approaching and they were about to call the game), thank you that we have all gathered at this place to play this game, I pray that you will keep us all safe and that we will honor you with our attitudes, AMEN."

Now before I go into my attempt at humor, hear me clearly - I think praying before anything is a good idea. And certainly praying that God would protect you from harm is always OK.

But this random thought I had was this: HOW FUNNY would it have been to huddle one evening and heard a prayer like this:

Dear Lord, please help us to crush the living daylights out of this team. We are bigger, faster, stronger, and have a lot more experience. We should destroy them. Lord, I thank you in advance for the victory you've already given us. Help us to lay claim to it. I pray for safety, but only for our team. If someone on their team gets hurt, I hope it's not too bad...but that would obviously help and give us a better advantage. Thank you for this beautiful day. The blue sky looks very similar to the blue sky that we played under the last time we destroyed this team. I pray we can once again experience the mercy rule - therefore ending this game early so I can go home and play Nintendo. (We didn't have Xbox360 back then.) I also pray for the umpires. They are smart, intelligent, dedicated, hard -working dudes (slip them each a $20 bill). Please light my bat on fire. I pray for 2 homeruns per teammate....well, except for Fred, who is 75 but still plays with us...I just pray he lives through another game. Also Lord, bless the concession stand food. AMEN.

Sorry, random I know. But that would have been funny.