Some of you won’t be able to identify with this, but some of you will. In Christian circles (no pun intended) we tend to pray a lot. The manners and social aspect of prayer with others have always been interesting to me. It took me a long time to be comfortable praying out loud in front of others, but I eventually got over that. That was a good thing, because once I started working at a church I was the Official Prayer at every family gathering. Every time a prayer was called for it was assumed I’d do the praying. But that’s not the point of this post.
One of the more common ways Christians pray is in a prayer circle, where everyone stands around (handholding optional) and takes turns praying out loud. Today I came across this hilarious list that anyone who has been involved in your standard evangelical Christian prayer circle will be able to relate to. It’s a list of people you will meet in a prayer circle – and it is wonderfully accurate. Here’s a taste:
2. The Almost-er
This is the person sitting near you that is constantly on the verge of praying. You can hear them doing that little breath thing, that small inhale that occurs a split second before someone speaks. And you can hear it because it's loud in the deafening silence of the prayer circle. Every time you are about to say a prayer you hear the Almost-er and you stop out of courtesy. And then they don't pray. So you start again and an inhale from the Almost-er stops you again. It's quite a little dance.
2 comments:
i'm a "the closer". but maybe not officially yet. i'm probably more of a "the setup man" right now.
I think we play different roles from one prayer circle to the next, depending on when and where it is. If you read the comments on the post I linked to, one of the first has a suggested addition to the list called "The Prayer Hog." It's the guy who prays first, and prays for all the prayer requests that were shared before the prayer began, so nobody has anything left to pray for unless they double up on what he prayed for. Funny stuff.
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