Pray at the Pump

I suppose it isn't surprising that with the pain of high gas prices we get this:

The Pray at the Pump Movement, founded by Rocky Twyman, has been holding prayer vigils at gas stations across the country. On Monday, Twyman decided to take his movement from Exxon and Shell stations straight to the steps of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C., hoping to encourage the oil-rich country to raise the amount of barrels they release each day from 200,000 to 1.2 million.

Twyman, who is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, spent the afternoon outside of the embassy praying and asking passersby to sign his petition for the release of more oil, which he hopes to deliver to the Saudi oil minister.

There is a well-known adage that God always answers prayers but doesn't always give us what we ask. Could it be that these prayers are already being answered?

We have known for decades now that for our own energy security and for the health of the planet we Americans need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and move away from our fossil-fuel guzzling, polluting ways. Yet, American car manufacturers give us Hummers and other obscene gas-hogs. And we buy them. Suburbia continues to explode with its massive highways, commutes, wasted gas, and tons of pollution. Every President since Richard Nixon talks about reducing our energy dependence on the Middle East but nothing ever changes; in fact it just gets worse.

So God, knowing all that is to come and watching it slowly but surely unfold, decides to speed things up. He gives us an oil-man for President and a Halliburtan executive for his VP. Conservation, they tell us, is for sissies. Global warming? Who you gonna believe? A bunch of educated scientists or Pat Robertson? What we need is to invade a country that has lots of oil. It's a win-win. Our friends get rich and the country has an unlimited supply of cheap oil. God bless America!

So a crisis that might have taken decades to arrive, with any semi-responsible national leadership nibbling at the edges of the problem, takes just eight years to explode under Bush-Cheney.

"Mission Accomplished." God has answered our prayers. For those who have ears to hear.