Looking back many years, I recall, as an early teenager, attending mid-week prayer meetings more out of a sense of duty than Christian enthusiasm. That may help to explain why I found it interesting to “time the prayers” and the record was 19 minutes. This was unusually long, but it was in the days when people would pray once during the hour, rather than every time a thought came to mind – no criticism intended.
Several years later, at another church, one lovely Christian man was concerned at the lack of “Amen’s” after some contributors had ended their prayer. His point was that, for example, if during a prayer you didn’t agree with just one statement, then you didn’t indicate your disagreement by withholding your “so be it.” I suppose one way of overcoming that problem was to make some sort of grunting noise or head nodding (usually unseen) to indicate what you did agree with!
As I read social media posts, including TFTD, is there a similar problem when just one sentence does not meet with approval? This becomes more of a challenge, to me, after my daily Bible reading from James 3 and the comments about the tongue, because the note-writer made an interesting observation. “I have heard it said that the new tongue is our thumbs.” With the increase in the number of “keyboard warriors”, I was challenged about the ease of responding too quickly, or on occasions too slowly, after reading online posts.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, as we seek Your wisdom and guidance in the use of our tongue, will You also help us in the use of our thumbs? AMEN