I’m the worst Christian ever.
But that’s OK because my friend Jamie is the Very Worst Missionary, and she and her husband seem pretty cool.
Maybe we’ll form some sort of club with a treehouse and a secret handshake and a live mongoose for a mascot. (If you’ve got a better way to keep the club from getting attacked by cobras, I would love to hear it. That’s what I thought.)
Why am I pretty sure I’m the worst Christian ever?
The long answer is the archives of this site, which in elaborate detail chronicle my many misadventures in faith.
The short answer is I apparently have a trick to avoid being asked to pray.
I’ve used this trick unknowingly for years, but three weeks ago I finally caught myself doing it.
I was in a production meeting at a Christian event circle, and we were almost done. I could sense a “closing prayer,” approaching off the portside bow of my chair. (I’ve been reading a lot of Clive Clusser books lately, so the amount of nautical references I feel like making has dramatically increased.)
Sensing that in any moment the leader of the meeting was going to ask, “Does anyone want to close us in prayer,” I automatically closed my eyes.
This is a fantastic trick because:
1. It looks like I’m so holy I went ahead and got a jump start on the prayer.
2. People hate to interrupt someone who looks like they are praying. (Except if they’re a waiter.)
3. It works the same way in hide and seek does when you’re little. If I close my eyes and can’t see them, they surely can’t see me either.
The “please close us in prayer” request flew right over my shoulder and landed in someone else’s lap. It literally missed me by only a few feet. Had I not closed my eyes and retreated into my mobile fortress of solitude, who can say what might have happened?
I probably would have been asked, and though I sometimes don’t feel called to close everyone in prayer, there’s no way I could refuse.
You might as well get a t-shirt that says, “I hate baby Jesus,” if someone asks you to close in prayer and you say, “Nah, I’m good.”
At least you could join my club and get to meet the mongoose. Who bites by the way. Not hard, but definitely often.
Question:
Do you ever feel nervous about praying out loud in front of people?
(I’ll go ahead and write the judgmental response for you, “Prayers are for God, not man!” Just feel free to copy and paste that into the comments to save time.)
