Prayer

Daaamm! I’m in; they let me into the Amish/Mennonite talk group. Here’s the welcome email I got to prove it:

Welcome five new members:
Welcome Angie from Alabama, Brian from Indiana, Christopher, Jana, and Melanie. Feel free to ask questions or join our discussion. A brief introduction would be appreciated. Due to the size and nature of this group, this is a primarily moderated group. Please do not post web addresses without permission from one of the moderators.
Kathleen
Moderator

I’m softening to the group a little already. I wonder if they’d let Kathleen(since she’s probably female) moderate our group on Sunday morning, or, even if our email group got together for a picnic on Sunday afternoon? On second thought I should remember to check the membership list, maybe I’m the only guy among 654 women. I guess Christopher is a man’s name. Now I’m going to have to figure out what to do with all of these poisonous emails streaming into my computer, at a rate of several per hour; I already got one on something entitled “headship” this morning, that should be real good. I guess it’s better than pornography.

Now I do feel a bit like a sheep in wolves clothing. But I guess somebody has to do it. I’ve vowed to wait at least a week to write my first email. It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it. Someone has to look out for the little sheep coming up. Someone has to say, “You know the world isn’t really all that bad, you can go out there and you won’t surely die.” Doesn’t that sound eerily familiar? I probably should not say that in an email since I think those words are already taken by somebody else, I think they were referring to some kind of deadly fruit.

Maybe I should use other words in my first email. Like, “If it looks like a wolf it is a wolf even if it carries a big Bible wherever it goes and speaks god speak with all the Biblically correct words.” Or, something like, “If it tells you how to groom or grow bodily hair (or not grow body hair) it’s a wolf for sure.” Or, “If it dominates the females of the species by telling them when to howl or what to wear, then it’s also a wolf.” Note that some might like their females to dress up in special, different, types of clothing around bedtime, I don’t think that is necessarily a characteristic of a wolf. Anyway, maybe I should not break all this stuff to our talk group right at first. Who knows maybe I’ll become a convert if I wait long enough.

Last night at the supper table I had an interesting thing happen. Prayer before meals was a practice that I think was started at Thanksgiving time several hundreds of years ago and has become sort of a ritual ever since. At least I have not been able to get it stopped in our home. It seems to fall heavily on my shoulders every night when we sit for our family meal. I used to look pleadingly at Lorilee whenever I was desperate for a break from the chore. Lorilee would then proceed to distribute the task evenly among the kids. I soon stopped giving her that look because I felt bad about asking someone else to do something that I didn’t want to do myself. Besides it seems way to hierarchical for her to be directing chores to the kids every time I give her that frustrated look.

And so I’ve fallen into a pattern over the years of saying exactly the same short, quick, prayer every night before we dig in. If one of us is missing I pray for that person too, and since Alisha is always at basketball practice in the winter she gets a mention every night lately.

“Dear God, I thank you for each person that is here. I pray that you will bless this food to our use. I pray that you will be with Alisha, In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Well, last night my prayer went like this instead:

“Dear God, I thank you for each person that is here. I pray that you will bless this food to our use. I pray that you will be with Jesus, in Alisha’s name, Amen.

As I looked up from my mumbling Dana had this big smile on her face. She does not have to speak because she communicates with her expressions. I went into my defense immediately, blurting out, “Why do I always have to be the one to pray?”

I wanted to continue with my defense and say all kinds of things about prayer and why one should not attempt to speak to God before one eats… especially if the food is good and they are hungry. But I could tell that my wife and son wanted to speak and so I clamped my teeth down on my laughter and listened.

Lorilee said, “Because you are our spiritual leader.” And then Trey chipped in with, “Because you are the Dad.”

I will have to find a way live with my family’s eloquent speeches, body language and all, for many years to come.

The fact is I know that I do pray and almost every day. When I see something beautiful I breathe something like this: “God, if you are out there, somewhere, thank-you.”

Actually, here are two very beautiful things:

The first is last summer’s Dahlia from our cottage garden and the second is Dana playing soccer last fall.