When God Demands the Ridiculous

Greeting, brothers and sisters in Christ.

There I was, soundly sleeping one night in 1977 when the Holy Spirit woke me up. Pray for Bing Crosby.

“Wait… ummm… What?!”

Pray for Bing Crosby

“You mean, like, the guy who sang White Christmas?”

Not that I knew anyone else named Bing Crosby, but I was feeling a bit bewildered. I mean, I didn’t even know someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew his gardener’s barber. Why would I need to pray for a complete stranger who was in no way in my social sphere of influence? He wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t really know much at all about him beyond his famous White Christmas song.

But the message was clear. So I prayed and went back to sleep.

The next day, I was going about my normal activities when the noon news came on. One of the top headlines- Bing Crosby has died.

Oh! Okay then!

Now I understood why he needed prayer, but why me? Of course, I may have been one of a hundred people who were urged by the Spirit to pray for him. But still…

Since it’s been a long time, I couldn’t remember exactly when that happened, so I looked up Bing before writing this post.

He did not lead a clean life, and apparently wasn’t particularly good to all his family members.

Some time before he died, he had begun having some serious health problems. Had these challenges caused him to start thinking of the afterlife? Had he begun seeking God? Perhaps he needed a little prod in the right direction, so I and unknown others needed to pray to push him toward that path.

Who knows, maybe I’ll meet him in Heaven.

The moral of this story is, if God ever wants you to do something that makes no sense, do it anyway.

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