Praying Our Lives

It comes with the job.  Preachers are often called upon to pray on command: a lunch gathering here, a sick parishioner there, church on Sunday goes without saying.

We hope we’re speaking for all the gathered when we open our mouths.

We hope that our belief that God listens is true.

We hope that our prayers matter.

And it does.

Separate from how prayers enter the consciousness of God, a thing very presumptuous to claim, there is the comfort our prayers bring to the hurting, the in-gathering our prayers reflect to and of the faithful, the settling into quiet they presage, the sending of blessing and well-wishing into the cosmos.

Of late, I have begun to see prayer more expansively, literally coming to understand our lives and every heartbeat of them as their own form of prayer, an offering, a supplication, if you will, to The Highest Power, whom I call God.

Whether we mean to or not; whether we’re particularly intentional about it or not, the lives we live are an offering – to God and to the world.

Seeing my own life this way changes how I live it.  It makes me more mindful, more thoughtful, more caring.  May it always be so, for there is much to mind, think on and care about.

May the life I live this day be acceptable and pleasing to You, O God.