Wishful Thinking.

This is a very interesting message that caught my attention, and was a bit tricky. Obviously, what the message wants to convey to the Christian fellowship is that wishing and praying are two different things. Wishing is merely hoping for something to happen, while praying to God is what will set things right. In a fictitious world, this manner of logic would make perfect sense. But in a world where reality disagrees with the existence of any gods, this message would likely raise a few questions.

Wishing and praying, both in a secular society (and even world), both rely on a single element: hope. When engaging in either practice of praying to a god or making a wish upon a star, one is hoping that something beneficial will happen (or in the former, disastrous, mainly towards the opposition). The sad fact is, hope is very easily crushed. When someone wishes or prays for something, there's a high chance that whatever it is they are hoping for won't come to fruition. The same can also be said for someone who prays or wishes for something and someone in another part of the world is praying or wishing for the exact opposite; SOMEONE is going to be very disappointed. My point? Prayer and wishes are not mutually exclusive, but hope is when combined with either of the two.

There is another difference between the two, however. Prayer can be used to calm a person, and helps them feel as if they're really talking to another human being. Wishing, as I've experienced, can sometimes get a person unraveled and excited. But then again, so can prayer. It's all about how you approach the situation, I suppose. Different people do different things. I, for example, don't pray. I try not to wish, but on occasion, I do. Hope is what drives me to wish for things, and it also drives me to carry out the actions I need to fulfill on my part to help the wish come true. What do I do when I get stressed out, though? Instead of praying, I count to ten.

In conclusion, in a world where gods exist, this message would be perfectly correct. However, we live in the real world where fairy tales are just that: fairy tales. It's nice to think that we might have a father in the heavens who watches over us, but it's just wishful thinking, the substance of things hoped for: faith, which is something I won't go into at this time. The bottom line is that wishes and prayers both require hope to fuel them, regardless of how you go about engaging in either practice. The real question is, which of these is the REAL substitute?