Once again this TOTALLY USELESS phrase is being used after the terrible tragedy that took place in Kentucky and surrounding states when a series of tornados touched down in early December.
Naturally, not everyone can serve as a rescue worker to clear out debris and search for bodies, but there are other available avenues to help those in need.
For example:
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A person could donate to an agency that would provide resources to help people rebuild.
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Or perhaps contact a nearby home improvement store and ask them to donate needed supplies.
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OR if you are someone with “resources” (as Jeff Bezos, who owned a warehouse in the affected area), you could contact local authorities and offer financial assistance to those hardest hit.
But “thoughts and prayers”? Give. Me. A. Break.
For one thing, I highly doubt the average individual who uses the phrase spends more than a couple of minutes actually thinking about the tragedy (Thoughts). And their “Prayers” (most likely uttered only one time) probably consist of little more than … “Dear God. Please be there for these unfortunate people. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” And then their “thoughts” are back to their own personal needs.
There’s a very old saying that the “Thoughts and Prayers” people would do well to remember …
ACTIONS Speak Louder Than WORDS (i.e., prayers)
Nan's Notebook 
You are forgetting that these are American Christians. For them, actions don’t matter at all. What matters is having the right magical beliefs.
</sarcasm>
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You are using sarcasm, Neil, but it would be lost on your Ametrcan Christians. They actually believe their “thoughts and prayers” do some good. Just watch, In 3 to 5 weeks, no one will be talking about the storm because the dead will be all buried, the living will still be alive, and the talking heads will be on to newer tragedies. That will mean it’s all over for those who suffered through these tornadoes. God has righted their universes, and no one needs think about them anymore. Obviously, the thoughts and prayers worked!
The thing is, the thinkers and prayers will not be going to these states to see if all is really well. They won’t want to know if it isn’t. And 3 to 5 weeks is probably stretching their attention spans, but I thought I would be nice and leave them in their happy places. Things like this will never happen to them. They love their God, and tell Him so every day, just in case…
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That is exactly what they believe. These people believe they are ‘saved by faith alone’ or some other such nonsense. As long as they believe they are saved. What they actually do doesn’t matter all that much.
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Yep. It’s like constantly saying… “Merry Christmas, Goodwill to All” while walking past several homeless people on the streets or in alleys next to dumpsters.
And writing a check or tossing a few dollars/coins does absolutely NOTHING to benefit severe needs in the mid-term or long-term. As they say Nan, it is always “boots on the ground and in the ditches/gutters with filthy fingers nails” that truly does any good. This type of Christian laziness is what further drove me far far away from ANYTHING Xian related in life!
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Thoughts and prayers aside, Christ addressed the regional tragedies of Luke 13 with a Shit Happens attitude–“Unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
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I am 100% in agreement with you, Nan!!! I want to punch someone every time I hear those words!
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“Thought and prayers, “Have a nice day”, “Oh we’ll have to get together”…it’s all the same…just meaningless phrases.
And you’re gonna hear about the people god saved and looked after during the tornado. Never mind he could have stopped the whole thing in the first place and had no one die and no families destroyed and no livelihoods destroyed and no pets killed ( I mean he is all powerful and loving, right?)
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Yeah, right.
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Mary, that kind of thing bugs me too. I saw a story some years ago about someone who’d lost their house, all of their possessions, everything in a storm, but the family bible survived and they were claiming it was a miracle from God. And I was thinking, wait a minute, God could have saved your house, prevented your family from losing everything they owned, but he decided to save a mass market book that cost about ten bucks instead?
What had me laughing though was when I saw a photo of the “saved” bible and there it was, laying in all the wreckage, along with a pristine copy of Interview with a Vampire peeking out of the rubble right next to it. So did that mean God was also an Anne Rice fan? (she just passed away, btw. I wasn’t a big fan of her books but some of them weren’t horrible)
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After reading this, I immediately bought Ann Rice’s memoir (spiritual confession) “Called Out of Darkness.”
God is not only a huge Ann Rice fan, His favorite genre is dark, speculative fiction. He also has a soft spot for all vampires. Just look at how the blood line myths have morphed into games, and the vamps from changed evil antagonists into loving protagonists and heroes of all kinds.
I got a kick out of “some of them weren’t horrible.” A grouchy backhanded critique, indeed. 🙂
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Now that I read that remark again, yeah, it is kind of uncomplimentary, isn’t it? The thing is I was once a fan of vampire fiction going back to the Chelsea Quinn Yarbro “St Germain” novels back in the 1980s. Then I read some of Rice’s stuff and it was decent. But then I tripped over the Anita Blake novels by Laurel Hamilton. The first few were good. Horrific, bloody, gross and overly sexual, but still not bad. But then the whole Anita Blake series just went right down the drain. There was more and more sex and less and less actual story and plot. And the sex just kept getting more and more bizarre The last one I read the heroine was in bed with five or six different guys, none of them actually human. Some of them were dead (I.e. vampires who couldn’t (ahem) perform, shall we say, unless they’d just sucked someone’s blood). One was a were-swan, for crying out loud. That pretty much killed the whole genre for me.
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I’ve started her memoir, but i suspect it will have been written before she declared herself “not Christian.” Thanks for the clarification and info.
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Apparently Senator Rand Paul, he of YUGE tax cuts and gov’t handouts for the rich whilst at the same time screwing over any aid to the poor and struggling, is begging President Biden for federal relief funds for Kentucky. Biden’s response should be a LOUD and CLEAR. “My thoughts ‘n Prayers are with your state, Senator, but we just can’t afford any financial help for your home state. Sorry. You shoulda planned ahead. Thoughts ‘n prayers, my brother. Thoughts ‘n prayers.”
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Inspiredbythedevine, didn’t Paul actually vote against the hurricane Sandy aid bill after the storm went through? I thought he refused to vote for it unless there were cuts in other government programs, or at least threatened to.
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I think you’re correct.
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Well I live in NW Tn. We had a tornado warning to the S, and then one to the N. Fortunately all we got out of it was a pretty good thunderstorm. We were lucky. I was up and down much of the night, going to sleep, jumping up when the weather alert radio/our phones went off. Tornado watch, severe T-storm warning, then tornado warning, not once but twice. So then you park your ass next to the TV with the local station radar to see whether or not you have to hit you safe place. Again, we were lucky.
When you have had (many years back) a ferocious F3-F4* tornado pass by close enough you can not only hear the freight train, but you can feel it reverberating through your body, you take these situations pretty darn seriously. I saw one out on the river one day too, it was a wee one, but nonetheless concerning. Anytime I see the conditions look good for tornados, and everything was there for this outbreak, I get a bit nervous. I’ve had a couple other close calls with these damn things, part of the cost of living here I suppose. Other folks get earthquakes, fires, volcanoes and floods, we get tornados. And an occaisional flood.
But yeah, thoughts and prayers have become the ultimate in pathetic people, with a pathetic lack of actual intentions. Shove your thoughts and prayers where the sun doesn’t shine. Actually do something, or just shut the hell up.
* At the time this tornado went by, the Fajita scale had it at an F3, but the scale was adjusted a bit and the new scale would have put it at, or very close, to an F4. Either way, it was something I have no interest in experiencing again.
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From what I’ve read, this one was especially destructive. And the fact that it happened at night! Double-Triple scary!
So very glad that it wasn’t in your “neighborhood,” although as you said, there’s no guarantees about future ones. BTW, do you have a cellar? What do you generally do if a tornado is bearing down on your location? (Prayers, no doubt, 😈 … but do you have other, more reliable resources?)
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Prayers lol!
All we have is an interior closet, with extra walls. The idea of dropping a short container into a hole for storage/storm shelter has been with us for a while. The $ always seems to go to more immediate needs… You know how that goes. I could rent a backhoe and dig the hole, get the container out here for probably around 2.5k, but the car is in the shop now getting the air fixed, my truck needs tires, etc etc etc…
We had a tornado warning here once some time ago, it was reported on the ground, close by, and heading our way. I saw it on radar, and I know they say not to do this, but I had everybody drop everything and get in the truck NOW! As I could see its trajectory, I knew which way to run to avoid it. We took off N, then circled back around E and S. When we got home it looked like it had snowed. There was that much hail on the ground. Limbs down, leaves/sticks strewn all over. It wasn’t a tornado here, but it moved on NE toward the river and became an F3 that damaged several homes.
Our neighbor has a basement, we are invited to use it anytime it’s called for. But haven’t tried that yet.
Between the bible addled, die hard Republican rednecks with guns, the terrible drivers, the weather, why am I living here?
🙂
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Yes … why do people live with hurricanes? Or floods? Or avalanches? Or earthquakes? Or FIRES (Oregon)?
Or redneck Republicans?
Because it’s “home.” And I’m sure you agree that the word encompasses far more than just the building one lives in.
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I’m in Florida…in the interior, but still…a big hurricane can do a lot of damage. But I really think a big tornado is worse and of course the terrible uncontrollable forest fires…
I read the three safest states for weather generally were Mich, Wisc and Minn., but no place it completely safe.
As for red neck republicans..got plenty of those here🤬🤬
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I’ve heard that when you finally have enough thoughts and prayers; the thoughts are weighed by angels, and the prayers are measured for length, assessed for quality, judged for spontaneity and sincerity, then adjusted for the degree to which the one praying holds a faith and trust in God herself.
All this takes so long that nothing appears to get done. But for heaven’s sake, it’s not easy being a deity these days. 🙂
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HA! I love it!! ❤👏👏😅
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Good. 🙂
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They send thoughts & prayers because they get to keep the all money that the gun lobby and gun manufacturers stuff into their pockets to allow crazy people & mentally ill people to buy guns and kill our children while they are at – of all places – school! We can no longer reasonably expect to send our children, babies even, off to school and expect them to return home – alive.
“Thoughts & Prayers” is the “soap” that washes the blood off their hands or, at least, covers it up.
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I know we have all seen and heard those folks being interviewed after surviving a disaster and giving thanks and praise to god that he/she/it saved them, with no apparent comprehension of those words when others around them are dead or mangled.
I have long since given up on that institute but saved for myself some of the names and titles from Christianity to enhance my expletives when I choose to use them. For emphasis.
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There is an opportunity here for making an app that sends Thoughts and Prayers whenever there is a tragedy
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Great idea! And I have no doubts that there are many who would take advantage of it.
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Definitely. All they will need to do is subscribe to the app to send messages automatically
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Ooo, have I got a deal for you! Let’s see if I can post a youtube link…
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BINGO!!!
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