Thoughts on Prayer

(The photo comes from the website Offthegridnews.com. If you like posts like this, they’re worth a good look.)

Since it’s Sunday and I’m at my desk working, rather than in church, I thought I’d  take a few minutes to write down some thoughts on prayer that have been hanging around lately.

My father was a classic and distinct prayer, and I would imagine that if you asked all six of us–his kids–and my mother to sit down alone and try to write a standard “Fisher” Keenan prayer, you would get seven copies of nearly the same thing.

This wasn’t due to laziness or a lack of imagination; rather, he had just learned what he needed to say to God on a regular basis, and those were the things he continued to pray for. I found some of those items important enough to incorporate them into my own prayers.

One in particular can be found in just about every prayer I utter. “Be with everyone that it is our duty to pray for.”

This is such a strong statement, and it is more so when you consider that my father understood how important the request is long before the Internet made the world smaller and 24 hour news and social media showed us just how much need there is for prayer in the world.

The statement reminds God that I realize that I’m not going to be able to recall just all the people and situations that it is my duty to pray for, but that they touched my heart profoundly enough in a moment that I realized prayer was needed going forward. Sometimes the goings on of the world are enough to erase things from my mind, but they’re never enough to erase the things that have been written on my heart. God reads these, sees these, and His grace and might are grand enough that His will shall abide despite my feeble human mind.

And when I say I’m praying for you, I am. I may not be able to call your name or situation to mind every time, but God knows what all has been written on my heart, and with that phrase, He tells me, “Yeah, I got all those too.”

So, there you are, friends, Sunday devotional. Thanks for reading. I’ll be praying that God’s will is pleasing to you.