Thoughts on Prayer

Everybody prays whether [you think] of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else's pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world.

Frederick Buechner 

 

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prayer

I have to admit

that in some ways

I am prayer challenged

 

I always feel inadequate when it comes to prayer

I know, seems odd coming from a pastor

but seriously

there are those prayers

that are long

flowery

full of amazing phrases

and then there my short little offerings

I am sorry

I just can't do it

especially when it comes to public prayer

that

thee and thou

kind of thing

its not that I don't pray

but my prayers are....

well....

different

I walk outside in the morning

and see the tamaracks turning golden in the fall air

and I say, "thank you'

I see a person walking down the street

that I know is struggling

and I say "be with them Lord"

I look at my own struggles

and I simply say "help"

I see someone help another

and I say "nice!"

 

I guess I am just 

a walking prayer

my prayers may be as short as word

and are rarely longer than a sentence

I'd like to think God understands!  

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In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

Romans 8:26