Who’s in your Amen corner?
I was talking to a couple of my colleagues here at Guideposts who do a lot of preaching, and I think it was Lemuel Beckett who said, “When you need encouragement it’s good to look to your Amen corner.”
I’d never heard the phrase but I latched onto the idea immediately. What a great thing to have in life! Those people you can look to who will say Amen when you’re out on a limb.
Admittedly, in my church, there aren’t a lot of people exclaiming Amen during the sermon. (“The frozen chosen,” another colleague ruefully put it.) But there are plenty of them at the coffee hour who come up to you and want to know: How are the kids? How’s the job? How are the parents? How are you? It’s like we’ve just come out of our prayer huddle and now it’s time to pass on some Amens to each other.
The word “Amen” is generally translated as “So be it” or “verily” or “truly.” I wish it was a feature on Facebook instead of “like.” Because Amen is what I want to click when someone asks for help losing weight, as a friend just did, or posts a picture of their incredibly cute kids or vents about a bureaucratic tangle. “Amen,” I want to say. “Amen, I hear you. Amen, I care about you. Amen, God loves you.”
In fact, I wish I could group my friends into something called an Amen corner. When I’m feeling down they’re the ones I can call for support or commiseration and encouragement. When I think about it, one of my biggest hopes in life is to be a crucial part of somebody’s Amen corner. My wife’s, my kids’, my colleagues’, my pals’. Dear Lord, put me in the Amen corner of the people who need it.
Not surprisingly, Lemuel is part of the OurPrayer team here, making sure everybody who sends in a prayer request gets prayed for. Staffers like him and our thousands of volunteers around the globe form one of the best Amen corners you can imagine. Got a prayer request? Let us know. We’re ready to pray.
Then say Amen, somebody. Say Amen!
