Sacramento, Calif. ? For eons, people have reached out to the Almighty with prayers and supplications. Soon they might be able to use their iPhones.

Fair Oaks teenager Allen Wright thought up an application for the Apple iPhone called “A Note to God.”

It lets iPhone users send prayers into cyberspace and allows them to read the prayers of others. The messages are stored in a database, and users remain anonymous.

Wright, 17, submitted his proposal to Medl Mobile, a Los Angeles startup that is developing apps for Apple to sell on its Web site. It selected “A Note to God” from 20,000 proposals.

“It’s so simple, it’s brilliant,” says Andrew Maltin, one of the co-founders of Medl Mobile. “We think it’s going to be extremely successful.”

Wright, a junior at Del Campo High School and regular churchgoer, says he came up with the idea while lying in bed and feeling lonesome.

“If you want to send a message, and you don’t have anybody to talk to, you could send a little prayer,” he says.

Apps, which iPhone users download from Apple, range from free to $5 or more. Users can play games, find restaurants or transform their iPhones into remote controls. There are hundreds of other applications.

Successful apps can generate thousands or even millions of dollars for developers. Any proceeds from “A Note to God” would be shared among Apple, Medl and Wright.

If his app becomes a big seller, Wright says he’d like to use his share of the profits to go to college.

Maltin says his firm is still waiting for approval from Apple, but it could come any day now.

Apple has rejected apps before for what it deemed inappropriate religious content, but Maltin says he didn’t think that would happen with “A Note to God.”

The application is not a joke, but a sincere way for people to reach out to the divine and to each other, he says.

Users can read each others’ prayers and be supportive by clicking on a “thumbs up” sign, he says. Otherwise, they can’t leave feedback or respond, he said.

Religious scholars contacted by The Sacramento Bee welcome the concept, although one offered a note of caution.

The Rev. James Murphy, vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, agrees the iPhone app “could be a high-tech form of prayer and an authentic way to express our desires to God.”

“There is in each one of us the need to communicate with the divine and to reach the transcendent,” he says.

But he cautioned would-be users to question their motivations.

“Prayer is direct to God, and God should be the primary motive,” he says. “If the motive is to be seen by others, be careful. There’s a sense in which prayer is private.”

He says whatever the form, prayers are heard. “God will hear it,” he says. “You don’t have to have his e-mail address.”

Wright, a lanky fair-haired teen, says he prays regularly and attends the New Life Community Church in Fair Oaks.

His favorite iPhone app is one that calls up quotes from Scripture.