So for the rest of this day, I’ll be getting texts from 17 other people responding to this prayer request.
Edit: Other than the initial flurry of hearts and replies pictured below, it’s actually been pretty quiet, thank goodness.
Reply to them with Matthew 6:5-8:
5 “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward! 6 But whenever you pray, go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. 7 When you pray, do not babble repetitiously like the Gentiles, because they think that by their many words they will be heard. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Tempting. My husband and I have stood in silent exasperation many times while grace was said over holiday meals. These are Baptists, and one of my uncles is a pastor, so prayers are long and wordy.
I wait an appropriate amount of time, like I would for any culture, then I just shrug and start eating lol.
They can observe their religion and pray, but I’m going to eat now, especially if I prepared the food.
My family likes to pray before meals. SiL started doing this thing with the kids where everyone has to go around and thank jeebus for something he almost certainly didn’t do.
the SiL takes five or ten minutes. mostly for shit like “and thank you for the every one having a job and thank you for so-and-so who did something or another that entertained my kids for five minutes” by which time the food has been on plates and cold.
Pretty sure Jesus would, like, admonish them for, you know, not eating. ‘hey look, you can do that later. just bless the food and dig in. its not hard. and that smells amazing… can I have some?’ (that last part is how you know she didn’t cook anything.)
I have some pretty crazy religious (by UK standards) relatives who love to pray loudly before eating. They do their best to make me join in at theirs (I generally just sit quietly with my hands in my lap and my eyes open instead of doing a big kumbaya hand holding circle) but I’ve made it pretty clear that’s not happening at mine.
Honestly I just feel like I want the ground to swallow me up sometimes, they do stuff like this “superman grace” with their kids which is an insane level of cringe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9KCZE7lCcM
Absolutely mad
It’s a request in good faith. Why of all things would you take issues with this? Nor are you forced to abide by that, but surely posting it online, even with the names hidden, is sort of breaking a small social contract between you and them, thar you wouldn’t use their words against them.
can’t even do that. It’s intangible and not actually a contract at all.
you send a message to anybody, for any reason, unless they have a specific legal duty to keep it secret; it’s fair game. It might rude, but then, so is sending a group text to 18 people. (this might make sense if it was a prayer circle, which, frankly, it’s clearly not. )
🙏For the person sitting next to her on the plane to leave the armrest for her🙏
My condolences. It’s such a stupid, dangerous, and exploitative practice.
In my former religion, it was 2 years in a foreign country. I’m lucky many of my family members came back alive, given the places they were sent. They “laugh” about stories of being assaulted, robbed, houses broken into, extorted and threatened, but it’s a joke now because it’s all part of “gods plan”
So disgusting.
(Edit: It’s also a way to make sure that they face stress and doubt away from any resources that might help them out of the abuse. Instead they’re at all times with another cult member tasked with keeping them on the straight and narrow. It’s more a 2 year indoctrination session where the member gets exposed to anti-religious views through aggressive proselytizing, but then is forced to work through that alternate view in a directed and monitored way so that they reach the “right” conclusion. When they get back, they’re so much more incredibly difficult to have a conversation with, because they’ve entrenched all the bullshit)
Oh, exploitative to the missionaries. I thought you meant the people being preached to, your comment didnt touch on that which is why I was curious.
I like that they list the exact prayers they want, I hate when they just ask you to pray for them, I need specifics, Deborah!
@cheesymoonshadow
Prayer is for when you think God’s plan isn’t good enough & you want him to change it to your plan.
I vaguely remember asking my mom about this when I was younger. Mom was the religious leader of our family, and I considered her a good authority on the subject because she said she almost lost her faith in college and did her own research which led her back to God.
She told me the act of prayer itself was a form of praise, an exercise of humility and deference to God. It doesn’t mean that God will change his mind; it just shows you’re humbling yourself before him and submitting to his will.
It hardly makes sense to me now but I bought into it 100% at the time.
