My first day in the office at Guideposts I was arranging my desk stuff, clearing the deck for action, as it were, when a little bell went off at precisely 9:45. An editor popped his head through my door and said, “Time for Prayer Fellowship. It’s voluntary but you should come since it’s your first time.”
Those of you who have read my book, The Promise of Hope, know that I knew very little about Guideposts when I took the job. I hadn’t known what to expect that first day but I certainly hadn’t expected this, starting the week with some kind of prayer meeting. The last time I had prayed was in Latin.
I was ushered into a conference room where at least half the magazine staff sat around a long table heaped with letter and cards which presumably contained prayers. Many were written in shaky hand. Some were typed, but most were written because this was before the invention of the IBM Selectric. People were pawing through them, finding ones to read and occasionally closing their eyes to pray for one. That’s it, I thought. I’m in a cult.
I considered sneaking out, grabbing my stuff, maybe swinging by human resources and destroying all my paperwork, then heading for the hills.
Too late. The door was closed. I was trapped in Prayer Fellowship.
Well, not really. I was free to go if I wanted. But as the staffers went around the table one by one and read a prayer letter or two aloud, I was drawn in.
And the variety of prayers was amazing. There were the megaprayers for world peace and an end to hunger and disease. But it was the microprayers, the everyday prayers that moved me. Someone asked for prayers for his old car so he could take a job that required him to drive it. A wife prayed that her husband shave his beard–she found it scratchy– but was afraid of hurting his feelings. Would the Lord intervene for her?
Going through those letters–I can’t remember the one I read–I realized there wasn’t anything that people wouldn’t pray for. For me it came as quite a revelation: People depended on prayer.
The 45 minutes went by fast, as have the 26 years since. We’ve moved the office a couple of times, most recently to downtown Manhattan, but we still have that brown table and we still gather around it every Monday morning, reading your prayer requests and praying.
You can join us this Monday for the Super Bowl of Prayer Fellowship, our Thanksgiving Day of Prayer.
