Grief transformed, prayer answered

Someone recently bereaved was telling me about his first new year alone — bleak and unpromising, nothing doing in an empty house, he wandered slightly aimlessly into town. There on the streets, he met a beggar. “What are you doing here?” the beggar asked him. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you what,” replied my friend. “You’re coming with me. We’re going tenpin bowling, then MacDonalds and New Year together.” They had a memorable evening. And next term, at school, the children sang in assembly love isn’t love unless you give it away. They’re right.

I was reminded of a sappy perhaps, but profoundly true sentiment about prayer from the (rather uneven) Evan Almighty, voiced by Morgan Freeman, who is fast cornering the market in playing the Voice of God: