Prayer

Something that someone mentioned about the power of prayer in a recent blog caused a stirring in me. My cousin and I have had discussions about prayer.

There is something about prayers that makes it so difficult to assume what is meant by that word. Prayer is multi-layered feelings, words, unconscious even, with as many unique deliveries and perceptions of what that means as there are snowflakes and fingerprints.

Openness about one's spirituality, and being willing to share your prayers for yourself are one thing. But my understanding and my needs can't be addressed by your prayers.

Prayers can only be defined by the person praying them, and only according to their interpretation of what they THINK you need.

In my walk through years of "christian-dom", I have seen many of these "good and well-intentioned" people pray their prayers as though they were 'white magic'. They treated God as a Santa of sorts and their prayers to God were their Christmas lists.

God knows me (and you) intricately. No one could know exactly what it is that ANY of us need, except the Creator. Those that think they know, even believe they are told by God what someone else needs, are still only getting close.

A bold statement was made by a friend the other day, when he asked someone that he wished they would stop praying for him. He had been feeling the impact of the prayer in his life and was not able to process these feelings with the bulk of everything else going on in his life. He was being prayer-jammed. It had created great confusion for him.

There was a joke that went around years ago - "I'm gonna PRAY for you!" (in an almost threatening tone) The reply: "Good! I need the prayer and YOU need the practice." It still makes me chuckle.

Letting others develop their own relationship with their Creator is something that is too personal and too involved for another to tamper with. I have found something that seems to work better than anything else that I could possibly pray for myself or anyone else for that matter. And it is this:

"Lord, Thy will be done and not mine."

We think we may know what we need for others, but so often we don't even realize what we need for ourselves. It seems to me that by asking the involvement of our Creator in our lives, giving the permission to have this power guide and lead each of us in our own unique journeys is best left to this simple prayer. A prayer of pleading that God will take care of us in all the ways that we are to need the guidance and to remain as open to that guidance as humanly possible.

God has the big picture. We don't. Simply put. So, I would rather have God calling the shots and relinquish my short order commands and requests by the all encompassing. "Not my will, but Thy will be done."