Dear Friends
Having recently overhauled St Cliff’s somewhat lacklustre and faith-deficient prayer ministry team so comprehensively that even the early church would have been proud (and by that I am not alluding to St Cuthbert’s up the road who have added an 8am service in an attempt, I suspect, to cream off the ‘Sunday trade’) it is none other than my goodself who has now gone and let the side down.
In fairness to me, the gentlemen who came forward for prayer last Sunday talked rather quietly and whilst it might have appeared that my attentive and forward-leaning posture was one of empathy and concern it was in fact nothing more than an attempt (and an unsuccessful one at that) to discover what on earth the mumbling fellow was indeed saying.
Rather than send him away ’empty-handed’ I finally decided to plump for my best guess at what he was asking me to pray for. Laying my hand on his bald pate I proceeded to command the renewal of the absent hair follicles, much to his surprise I might add.
It was only after I had pronounced a hearty and faith-filled “Amen” that I discovered, to my utter embarrassment, that the gentleman had actually wanted me to pray for his family whose pet rabbit had recently passed away and thus for ‘their loss’ and not, as I had mistakenly imagined, ‘hair loss’.
I think I will probably absent myself from the prayer ministry rota for the next week or two until its reputation is once more restored.
Onward and upward
Derek
The Best of Derek the Cleric 