Gas from above

Gas prices are again poking through the stratosphere. The price for a gallon of unleaded in California closed Monday at $3.27, up 36 cents from a month ago and 48 cents from a year ago. Oil futures closed at $66 a barrel and were down about a buck today, high but well below their peaks last summer.

What can be done? AAA has a bunch of suggestions: drive less, turn the A/C off and keep the windows shut, empty the trunk. We also could start by having more people pump biodiesel, which costs an unfluctuating $3.25 a gallon, into their diesel engines. But there isn't enough biodiesel for every American, most of whom would need to buy new cars.

Maybe what we need is for PrayLive to return. A mobile prayer network that brought its power of heavenly persuasion to Hollywood last year, the group has expressed a concern with the pressure high pump prices put on the country. Theologians, though, have told me that our fuel pain might be just what God has in mind to ween us off a limited natural resource.

From the article I wrote last year about PrayLive:

The Rev. Beatrice Williams drove 110 miles to Hollywood on Wednesday to beg the Lord for lower gasoline prices.

"There is victory when we stand together," Williams said, after joining eight others in prayer. "We will overcome, and we will overcome this if there are enough people who believe that God cares."

Standing beneath the Gothic Revival tower of Hollywood United Methodist Church - and across from a Chevron station charging $3.43 a gallon for unleaded - the group asked God to comfort those paying more while driving less.

"We give you praise and honor and glory. You are king of all kings. You know our needs," Bishop Donald Downing, pastor of Heart to Heart Christian Center in Fort Washington, Md., prayed as cars zipped through the intersection of Highland and Franklin avenues, occasionally honking.

"These high gas prices, Lord, bring them down, oh Father."

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Gasoline experts have been offering advice for months on how drivers can reduce fuel prices: empty the trunk, combine errands, keep tires properly inflated, maintain a steady speed.

"People seek - what is the word I'm looking for? - relief in many ways," said Jeff Spring, a spokesman for the Automobile Club of Southern California. "We would recommend they continue to try to cut their use of gas to try to lower the prices. Reduced demand will lower their prices."

What about asking for help from above?

"I'll leave that question up to the theologians," Spring said.

In Scripture, God's children tend to pray for illnesses to be healed and for persecution to be stopped, said Patrick Miller, professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary.

"Situations that evoke people's crying out to the Lord - what I would call prayers for help - tend to be situations when the community is in dire straits," Miller said.

But rising gas prices are different because it's possible God is reminding Americans the world has limited natural resources, Miller said. Praying to overcome human excess would be like praying to ace an exam that wasn't studied for.

On the other hand, it would be appropriate to pray for wisdom to respectfully live in God's creation and conserve natural resources, Miller said, which was why the Rev. Ed Hansen agreed to have Wednesday's prayer session outside his church.

"It is very unjust that profits can be so high when people are so deeply affected," said Hansen, who drives a 2004 Prius and lives a mile from his church. "From a faith perspective, I believe God wants us to work for justice."