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From Rabbi Pete Tobias of the Liberal Synagogue, Elstree:

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I follow God on Twitter. I have to be honest – I don’t think it’s really God. The account doesn’t have the badge to show it’s authentic. And some of the language is a bit ungodly. Nevertheless some of the comments on the TweetOfGod account are thought provoking, which, I suppose, is what contemplating God is meant to make us do.

One of this bogus God’s recent tweets on prayer showed a picture of some American Football players kneeling in a circle and praying, presumably asking God for victory. The text accompanying the image says ‘Not listening. Don’t care. Shut up shut up shut up.’

If both teams in a contest and their respective supporters implore God to favour them, what’s God supposed to do? It reminds me of my first lesson about asking God to do impossible things. It came not from a rabbi but from an Enid Blyton book – I forget which one. It had a nice family and a not-so-nice family. The daughter of the nice family tried to teach her not-so-nice counterpart about prayer. A few days later, after a school test, not-so-nice girl protested that prayer didn’t work. ‘The test asked what was the capital of France,’ she explained. ‘I put Berlin. When I realised it was wrong, I prayed to God to make Berlin France’s capital but he didn’t. So praying doesn’t work.’

Asking God to make a sports team win or change a European capital is ridiculous and unfair. If we’re going to pray to God to ask for things, we have to give God a chance to make them happen. But prayer isn’t just about asking for things, however reasonable our demands might be. Another key element of prayer is gratitude and appreciation.

13th century Christian philosopher Meister Eckhart said ‘If the only prayer you said was thank you,that would be enough.’ Sometimes it’s hard to be appreciative, but here’s a Yiddish proverb that indicates the importance of gratitude even in adversity: ‘If a Jew breaks a leg, he thanks God that he didn’t break both legs; if he breaks both, he thanks God he didn’t break his neck.’ I believe there is always something in our lives for which to be grateful and to acknowledge with thanks.