HEAVEN - God, the all-knowing, all-seeing ruler of the parts of earth that believe, announced that there would be a significant delay in prayer response due to the World Cup.

"There's a problem in quadrant D9.
Can we get an MOD to the prayer phone, please?
MOD to the prayer phone."

"We've hit a full on overload situation," stated God to The Nutmeg News. "With all the prayer requests coming in from World Cup fans I haven't even had time to get to the people with illness, the poor, the destitute, the troubled, the sinful or the unbelievers."

According to insider sources with the Supreme Being, God had to diversify the prayer response to other sources as heaven contracted Shiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, Buddha, Odin, Loki, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and even Satan to help out.

"Beggar's can't be choosers," stated the Almighty who tried to respond to a praying Spanish fan standing at his home in Madrid. "I've even got Jesus and Mohammed off their little vacations to come help out. You ever work in a phonebank with those two? It's just jokes, jokes, jokes and then I find out that Jesus is drinking 'water' the whole time. My me, it was difficult."

According to reports, some prayers were answered incorrectly as a man looking for a win for Colombia actually received englightenment and reportedly gave up on the sport of soccer to write a novel.

"There will be plenty of time to fix things after this is done, but I can't wait to see what...um... Ronaldo... yeah.... Ronaldo is going to do this time," stated God. "To be fair, I'm taking another vacation in 3 weeks, so honestly you guys are on your own for a bit."

The Nutmeg News will have more on this as God intervenes in one of the World Cup matches just to mess with a parlay placed in a Las Vegas sport book by Steve "t-bone" Howard.