As a child, I had prayer habits—or rather, my parents and grandparents had them for me. Every morning I would thank God for my teachers, my lunch, school recess and my parents. You might call prayer “pattern recognition” or “pause” as many gurus do, or simply “conversation with God.”
Morning is a time to be thankful for all the good that is on the way to us, to ask for help for the tests and challenges that are on their way to us, and to say “wow” for the wonder of being alive on a day such as this. Night prayers bookend and follow: It is as good to review our days with thanks as it is to forecast our days with thanks.
You may say you don’t have time for so much prayer in your life. Yet you are already waking up with thoughts, going to sleep with thoughts. So, you are probably already doing a lot of reflection, but it may be habituated as worry or anxiety or even fear.
The excuse of not having enough time doesn’t wash with me. We don’t have enough time not to pray.
This message is excerpted from “Make prayer a habit” by Donna Schaper in the March 2019 issue of Gather magazine.
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