One Saturday morning I was watching the Saturday Today Show, and they interviewed Jonelle Monáe. I didn’t recognize who she was until they mentioned that she had appeared in the movie “Hidden Figures”; as a math nerd I had enjoyed it very much, which drew me to the interview. I had never heard any of her music, but it turns out she is better known as a musical artist and composer than as an actress.

Monáe grew up in the segregated working-class Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City. Her mother was a janitor and her father was a garbage truck driver who struggled with addiction. Nevertheless, she felt blessed to have strong family support, much of it coming from several aunts in her extended family. She loved to sing and perform and from an early age she dreamed of someday being a professional singer. After high school she received a scholarship to study drama and music at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. She dropped out after one year, because she wanted to start singing with a group, which gave her the opportunity to perform some of her own music. She feels that it was all for the best, but during the interview she laughingly reported that at the time, she received friendly chiding from her aunts who said, “You’ve gone and wasted all our prayers.”

Can prayers be wasted? Certainly we can fail to recognize, ignore, or even reject the answers to prayers. Sometimes we think that a situation is so hopeless (e.g. world peace) that we feel it would be a waste to pray. When the answers to our prayers are not clear, we sometimes think that they haven’t been answered and that praying them was waste. If we view prayer as like putting coins in a vending machine, it is easy to feel that way. I’ve been told that the Hebrew word for prayer has the same root as connect, and I think this describes the purpose of prayer – to connect with God. When that purpose is considered, I don’t think that a prayer can be wasted. How can a connection with a God that loves YOU and me unconditionally ever be wasted?

Jim