Praying

Do you pray?

Lily prays each night for three members of the family (picked out of a book bag), and then a Wow, Thank you, Sorry, Please prayer, which usually goes along the lines of: Wow God, you made me, Thank you for nursery, Sorry for not eating all my lunch up, Please hold my hands. She sometimes makes lego people pray, but they have far more exciting prayers, along the lines of please God help the mummy to have the baby without it hurting and please help the daddy to get there in time to see the baby. Where did this come from?

I pray short prayers, prayers with my husband, occasionally long or desperate prayers, prayers of joy and gratefulness, prayers of concern and supplication. When I pray, things happen. When I pray, God grants me peace. When I don’t pray, I don’t feel the peace. Prayer is the only thing we are told to do without ceasing in the Bible (1 Thess. 5:17). I take that to mean keeping a line open to God at all times. Most of the time I don’t need to say much. Sometimes there is nothing I can say. Often it is God who needs to do the talking, nudging, prompting or teaching.

Prayer has been most powerfully and effectively measured in my life when Christians come together to pray, especially for others.

I have felt the most lost in my life when I have shunned prayer. I have felt the most relief in my life when I have opened the channel to God. I am hardly the best pray-er I know, and I am not good at encouraging others in praying enough or making time in a busy schedule, but I am certainly not bored by prayer. Why would you be bored in a relationship conversation with your dearest friend, saviour and father?

So it interested me to find this today: a child who had written a letter to Einstein and his reply, on the subject of prayer.

Which made me think, anyone who hasn’t fully experienced what prayer is really like may make an unscientific assumption about the naivety of the religiosity of those who do engage with God. And also they may look ridiculously scary when made into lego.