Kudos to Allen Wright, the Sacramento teenager who dreamed up a brilliant new application for the Apple iPhone called “A Note to God.” Wright, 17 and a student at Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, California said he got idea while lying in bed and feeling lonesome. He submitted his concept to Medl Mobile, a Los Angeles startup company that develops new applications for Apple. They chose Wright’s idea from among 20,000 proposals. 

“A Note to God” lets iPhone users text their prayers into cyberspace and allows them to read the prayers others send. While the “heart” of the message heads to God, the code is stored in a database where the user’s identity remains anonymous.

“If you want to send a message, and you don’t have anybody to talk to, you could send a little prayer,” Wright explains. Users can then read each others’ prayers and show their support by clicking on a “thumbs up” sign. Beyond that, the only feedback the pray-er can expect would be God’s.

Granted, I haven’t seen this program in action, but it sounds ingenious. “Thumbs-up” on this end! This not only sounds like a great trigger for prayer discipline, but it seems like a great way to build a community of support around prayer. Jesus was all about that! He urges us to find others who can agree with our requests. Corporate prayer is double powerful.

Of course we don’t need mechanisms (or machines) like this to truly pray. And yes, there’s always a danger of supposing we need God’s cell number to truly communicate with him. Texting and Facebook are not replacements for face to face and eye to eye communication. But technology can help make an existing relationship more consistent. If this application can help me ray more, with more focus and clarity, then “cheers!” I’m in! Anything that can reminds me that God is ever present and helps me get “present” with others in prayer, can be truly helpful, so long as it’s used as media and not confused for the Heart of the Matter – who is God himself.