We do a great deal of praying, often for other people. I don’t consider myself to be a great prayer of prayers, but I do know a woman who was a prolific prayer warrior on behalf of other people’s needs… or so I thought.
I had come to know her from the comments section of a Catholic blog I visited frequently. She is a delightful person with a bubbly personality, and a beautifully simple faith. I was always impressed that she was among the first to pipe in that she was praying for different people and their needs – every time the slightest need came up.
Then one day, without the least prompt from anyone and for no apparent reason, she suddenly admitted that she rarely took the time to pray, as she had repeatedly said she’d done.
Frankly, I think I was much more impressed by the admission, and subsequent promise to do better, than I was having previously believed she was actually a prolific prayer warrior for all the needy souls out there. Plus, there’s the added bonus of having inspired this next Go Forth initiative, The Book of Counted Prayers.
The basic idea is this: when you’re firing off a prayer in the moment, also take the time to jot it down somewhere, perhaps in a notebook, journal, or even on a sheets of scrap paper or sticky notes. And it doesn’t have to happen in that order. You can jot it down first, and offer it to the Lord second via vocal prayer, mental prayer, or a meditation.
This all seems easy to me because my prayers are generally very short and to the point. For others it may be a bit more challenging and time consuming, but the idea is to help us be more deliberate, faithful and trusting in our prayers. For a good example of this, consider The Surrender Prayer Novena found here >
“O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!”
Some day, maybe without the least prompt from anyone and for no apparent reason, you just may gather up all the prayers you jotted down for a soul that’s dear to you, attach them to a note or email, and send them to that person… maybe just when they need to hear it the most.
