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.

  • @KoboldCoterieEnglish
    42•3 months ago

    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.

    • cheesymoonshadowOPEnglish
      16•3 months ago

      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.

      • @wellee@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10•3 months ago

        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.

        • FuglyDuckEnglish
          2•3 months ago

          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.)

        • @AlpacaChariot@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1•3 months ago

          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

    • @RatBin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      -3•3 months ago

      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.

      • @wellee@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11•3 months ago

        It is incredibly rude to ask someone not of their religion to pray. In addition to the minor annoyance of being bomblasted by emojis and texts.

      • cheesymoonshadowOPEnglish
        9•3 months ago

        Another take on my post:

        “My relative is asking me to pray to Poseidon for calm seas while her daughter goes on a sea voyage to convert people into our cult of human sacrifice.”

        • FuglyDuckEnglish
          2•3 months ago

          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. )