By Mesha
The other day, the newly-married wife of a nephew of mine invited me over to their place for a meal. This was to be the first time for me to visit them at their home. Now, I have a regular practice of praying to God before a meal, when I thank God for it, request Him to bless it and to bless all the beings that have gone into it and into arranging for it and also pray that the energy that may be generated through it be used to glorify His Name and to do His will. However, that day, as we got down to our meal, I did not say this prayer aloud. If I remember correctly, I said only a very rapid silent prayer in my mind—perhaps just a short one-liner— so that no one noticed what I was doing and then quickly got down to the task of eating and chatting with the others at the dining table.
You might wonder why I avoided praying aloud on that occasion. It was likely fear of being thought of as ‘silly’, ‘old-fashioned’, ‘primitive’, ‘hypocritical’ ‘preachy’, ‘goody-goody’ or ‘overtly and unnecessarily religious’ for doing so. You see, in some of the circles I move around in (and this likely includes a large portion of the family I was born into), God isn’t taken very seriously, and so, nor is prayer, even among folks who may not call themselves ‘atheists’. If I am not mistaken, God rarely, if ever, figures in their conversations and prayer is not something that one ever thinks of doing unless perhaps in an emergency situation, and even then it might be outsourced, as it were, to some religious ‘professional’ to do on one’s behalf, like a priest, for which they might be well paid. Because of this, to talk of God as if God were indeed a reality and to pray to God in front of others, as on the occasion of a shared meal, are considered decidedly odd and out-of-place, to put it mildly. It might even be thought of as ‘spoiling the fun’ or ‘too somber for a joyous occasion’. For some folks, it is as if taking God seriously is something only some ‘backward-thinking’ people or ‘religious nutcases’ do.
Hopefully you can now understand why I didn’t pray before that meal that day. Maybe I was just too embarrassed, ashamed or fearful to take God’s Name then. Maybe I didn’t want to be thought of by my nephew and his wife as a fool, as a sort of ‘backward-thinking religious nutcase’.
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Later on, I dwelled on what I had done that day (or rather, had not done)—not praying aloud to God before we began our meal—and I felt it was wrong. To be ashamed to acknowledge and thank God before other people because of what they might think about it is really a terrible thing, although one should know how and when to speak of God and to invoke God depending on the context. There is a time, place and method for everything, I suppose.
I now think that if I am invited to my nephew and his wife’s home for a meal again, I will, hopefully, be courageous and faithful enough to do differently—I will explain to them that I have a practice of praying to God before a meal and will proceed to doing just that. Perhaps they will not mind my doing so, though it might be something novel for them. Who knows, they might even appreciate it and begin doing so themselves if they don’t do so already!
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