The yellow photocopied texts are leafed through. "Six days!" she calls out. The yellow pages are turned over even though the lyrics imprinted in our minds are bolder than the ones fading away in the dilapidated texts.
A family prayer meet is (supposed to be) held every Friday at my place. This has been a family tradition ever since, enforced most ruthlessly by my father. Each week we take turns to read the good word and recite our prayer, which is in some way, a relief off our shoulders.
But this is the singular perspective of a critique that I do not absolutely uphold. For a more practical purpose, our 'prayer meets' serve as a wonderful time for the family to come together to discuss the problems we face and the future ahead.
"A family that prays together, stays together", my dad always said and continues to. That's another issue that he often ends up discussing the miniature issues of the car engine and the dusty fans.
But on a meaningful note, the outcome of these gatherings has rubbed off in my instinctive nature to be as open and sincere with them as life's idiosyncrasies would permit; because in my growing years, I have rarely come by parents who know and appreciate their kids for whom they really are.
A part of this credit goes to my folks in their effort of raising us in the most fairly civilized manner, rarely resorting to unquestionable dictatorship. However, my spiritual intuition believes that the good lord presides over all such meetings. And that his blessings may not be immediate or apparent but is, nevertheless, assured and ever lasting.
"He teaches me to watch and pray and sing rejoicing everyday..."
As a free and flexible (condemned as loose by many) Christian, I don't stick by the dictum of any particular denomination. I don't fret to testify to it even right now. Religion is a personal matter. It all boils down to your faith that finds you, and not vice versa. It saddens my soul to see mass upheavals in the name of religion. Because the essence does not lie in mass statistics and domination. Any religion that makes it better for that one person is the best that could ever be.
Like Jesus Christ made a difference in what my life could have been if not for his angels who I call my parents. His trust in every individual to "reap whatever he sows" is the kind of upbringing that I am eternally grateful for. This is what I have deduced, not from bible stories or church hymns, but those "tiresome" prayer meets.
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