How is Your Prayer Life?

We all have a short list of go-to questions when we bump into someone we know in the grocery store or in The Commons.  

How are you? How have you been? How is your family?  

Often, I respond to these questions without thinking, “Busy!”  

In this informal liturgy of our days, we have been trained to ask a surface level question and give a surface level answer. There is nothing wrong here. There are moments that call for surface level interaction and we are all, in fact, very busy.  

Lately, I have asked a different question of folks I interact with around the halls of Christ Church. 

How is your prayer life?  

It is not meant to accuse or bring judgement. Perhaps no one’s prayer life is as full as it could be – I know mine isn’t. But we mustn't neglect the fact that prayer – “responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words” – is the most fundamental and important thing we can do as human beings.  

Did your eyebrows just go up? “The most fundamental and important thing” – yes!  

The root of the word prayer is linked to the Latin word precarius. British pastor and author Pete Grieg wrote, “We pray because life is precarious. We pray because life is marvelous. We pray because we find ourselves at a loss for many things, but not for the simplest words like ‘please,’ 'thank you,’ ‘wow,’ and ‘help.’ I prayed when I held our babies for the first time. I prayed when work overwhelmed me, and I knew I couldn’t cope. I prayed when my wife was wheeled away down the hospital corridor unconscious. I prayed the night I saw the northern lights.”  

We pray because we are not in control of our lives. We don’t make the sun rise or the earth spin. We are not guaranteed anything – especially not the things that we spend so much time planning, scheming, or worrying about.   

How is your prayer life? 

This is not a test. It is an invitation to pause amid a busy life and recognize that the solution to much of the anxiety and overwhelm that we feel in our hyperconnected days comes in reconnecting to the ground of our being and the source of our life – the God of Jesus Christ who is as close to you right now as your next breath.  

This eDevotion could be the start of a new chapter in your prayer life. This could be a moment of peace when you come home to yourself and recognize that God is with you even now. 

What if you stopped right now, put down your phone or moved away from your computer, closed your eyes, opened your hands, and prayed?  

Dear God, thank you for this moment. Please be with me as I walk through the rest of this day. Open my eyes to see you in the people I meet and the places I go. Help me rest in your grace and mercy. In Christ’s name, Amen.