The Dan Bern Lyrics Archive
I got good news and bad news to tell you about God
Good news and bad news to tell you all about God
The good news is he answers every single prayer
Isn't that fantastic?
Every single prayer!
But God has an awful lot of time on his hands
God has an awful lot of time on his hands
And God has a backlog of prayers to be answered
That streches from Miami to the far side of Neptune
You see when you say a prayer
It goes into a filofax and usually sits there for three million years
When God finally gets to it
He takes it out and looks at it
He leans back in his leather chair
Considers it and ruminates and coughs and clears his throat
And meanwhile another 55,000 years have now gone by
And when finally grants your prayer,
Your simple request
For nice weather for your mother's Sunday game of tennis
Your mother's long dead and you're long dead
And your entire species is often-times extinct
Or has often left the planet
Or evolved into a creature that lives only in a dome
And does not require sunshine to play tennis
They say God works in mysterious ways
God does not work in mysterious ways
God is predictable
God is organized
But God has a lifetime that's so very very LONG
Compared to yours or mine
It's like if you were a bug and you crawled around the world
And you did it again and again and again and again
Like trillions of times 'till your tiny little tracks
Created so much erosion that the earth looked like a
Sphere with its center strip cut out
Like a humungous yo-yo
Lying on its side
That's like an afternoon stroll before dinner for God
In the cenezoic age a long time ago
An austrolopithicus, that is to say a monkey
Was trying to run away from a wooly rhinocerous
And while he was being chased
He wished that the heavens would open up and give
That wooly rhinocerous a great big sunburn
He was not exactly sure how to say melanoma or hole in the ozone!
But the sentiment was there
The prayer was there
They say God works in mysterious ways
He doesn't work in mysterious ways
It's just that God has an awful lot of time on his hands
God has an awful lot of time on his hands
God has an awful lot of time on his hands
And incidentally, if you think God is old, you ought to see his parents
Down in south Florida
God has an awful lot of time on his hands
God has an awful lot of time on his hands
God has an awful lot of time on his hands
God has an awful lot of time
