What is prayer?

Pray Without Ceasing

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Jesus Christ for you.  Do not quench the spirit.”

                                                  1 Thessalonians 5: 15-19

“I believe the vital ingredient is love---a state of caring and compassion that is so deep and genuine that the barriers that we erect around the self are transcended.”

                                                  Larry Dossey, M.D.

                                                  Reinventing Medicine

            We live in amazing times.  In my grandmother’s lifetime, we went from horse and carriage to the space age.  In my lifetime, we have gone from no antibiotics or vaccines to nano-technology that allows us to correct the DNA inside an aberrant cell.  So, in these days of almost daily scientific miracles, does prayer still have meaning?  What is prayer, anyway?  What does it mean to “pray without ceasing?” And, for what should we pray?  Does praying without ceasing mean we walk around mumbling to ourselves, completely oblivious to the world around us, begging God to do something about the traffic and the price of gas?

            Probably not, though we know that Jesus himself was not above asking God for what he needed---his daily bread, to live and not die an untimely death.  There is no shame in asking God for what you truly need.  But more than this, I believe prayer is a simple awareness that, as C.G. Jung said, “bidden or not, God is always present.”  Prayer is trust that there is a power greater than myself of which I am a part.  I can think to myself, “Today I hold Joe (or John or Nancy) in the light of love, and ask for whatever is in his/her highest good,” and know that the compassion I feel touches them by way of that greater power because I am not separate from it.  I trust that.

            If we believe that God is love then every act of love that we send out into our troubled world, whether in the form of an action, a thought, or a prayer, is an act of God.  We are, in that moment, an extension of God’s love for God’s creation.  Prayer involves listening for the stirring of spirit inside us and trusting that spirit of love to guide our thoughts and actions.  When we depart from the spirit of love, when we engage in fear and negativity, what is required is simply returning our awareness to the fact of God’s presence.  We can call our spirit back just by asking. 

Thanks be to God,

Jane