Prayer can be a struggle some times. Ok, often. And we often think that God will come to us and answer our prayers in a flaming chariot just like the one that carried Elijah to Heaven. But He doesn’t, usually.
I’ve heard people say that you see what a person is made of when they are faced with adversity. I’ve heard it said that you see a person’s true faith in a crisis.
And that’s important, yes. We need leaders and people with character in the face of adversity. We need to reach out to God and trust Him in the face of crisis and disaster, and we need to turn our lives in those situations over to Him, when we have nowhere else to turn.
But I’m not sure that how we act and what we do in the times of adversity is the most important metric. I feel that what is most important is what you do – when no one is watching. How is your faith and spiritual life in the mundane, and calm periods of life?
How is your relationship with God when everything is going right? I’m telling ya, your answer to this dictates your answer when your punched in the face with a crisis or disaster.
It’s the routine you set. The discipline. There is a reason the Rosary is so powerful. Sure, it is the devotion and meditative prayer to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit through our Blessed Mother – but there is more.
The Rosary is boring at times. And at times, you just don’t feel Him. At times, you just have to push through it. But the power is in the devotion. The power is in the mundane. The power is in the discipline. And usually, no one knows when you pray it, except God.
Faith and discipline and doing the right thing, invoking the presence of God in the moment, whatever moment that is, especially in the mundane, ordinary things of life – that is where we find God. That is where He hears us most clearly. That is where He answers us. In those quiet, ordinary, everyday things. In secret.
We don’t need to be extremely vocal. We don’t need to be in some sort of in-depth trance or meditation. The Holy Spirit hears us, those inexpressible groans within our very spirit and soul.
I thought of this the other day, when I heard of someone say that they feel guilty because they are not praying hard enough or intently enough for those acquaintances of theirs who have asked for prayers, or that they forget.
Sure, there is power in deep, meditative, prayer. But that type of prayer is not the norm for most of us. It’s those little prayers that we offer throughout the day. God, please be with me at this time. Jesus, please be with so-and-so… A simple pause – a thought and a prayer.
You can’t express the words. You can’t express the empathy. You can’t meditate deep enough. And the Holy Spirit knows this. And so, when someone asks for a prayer, yes, we can offer up a Rosary, as there is huge merit in that. Yes, offering an Our Father is powerful.
But just taking the time to pause – and close your eyes and think about that person, or their cause, or their hurt. Whatever it may be. The Holy Spirit hears this, and expresses those prayers in ways that you cannot.
We do this, by turning into our inner room. If only for a few seconds. You know what I’m talking about. When you close your eyes and look deep within yourself. You can look into your heart, into your soul. And this is where you find Him. And the Spirit that is within you, hears you, and does the rest, expresses those thoughts and prayers in ways that we cannot.
This, in my mind, is one thing that we can take away from what Jesus is talking about today. We don’t need to pray like Him. We can’t. We don’t need to pray in ways that everyone sees and hears just to put on a show so that people see what we’re doing.
God knows what’s in our hearts. His Spirit hears what’s in our soul. We just simply need to take pause, and go into our inner room throughout the day, even if only for a few seconds, and He will hear us, and He will take it from there.
