Please enjoy a blog written by Elder Allison Carlos on Prayer:
What do we really think about prayer or praying? Maybe, a more interesting question is, what do we, as Christ followers, allow prayer to become in our lives? Could it be at times that the idea of prayer invokes images of routine or performance of ritual, in our own lives and as promises in care for others?
It is painful to think of all we would compromise and abandon if prayer were reduced to a habit formed to compartmentalize and create discrete packaging for what we engage in, simply becoming something else we do. Frankly, if we were so inclined to neatly package important nuances of our lives, “tidy” treatment of prayer life would come too easily for comfort. That would be immeasurably sad and an unfortunate discarding of what God provided for His good pleasure and our benefit.
What if we believed prayer was the avenue by which we could be known for who we are, and experience peace, truth, and reality? Wouldn’t we listen and speak into that all the time for comfort and clarification? Perhaps at times we hold back or are discouraged from fully accepting that the God of the universe would be so available and instructive to us in an intimate way.
In recently reading of the life of St Theresa of Avila, her description of her struggle around prayer was striking. In many of her most difficult and early years of distraction with illness and temptation, she describes her courage to still practice intentional prayer. She beautifully explains the courage it takes to know that even in ones betrayal of God, with at times a divided heart, He will be present to us. She describes His presence not merely as being near us, but so attentive and intimate that it is as if He is looking directly at only us.
The thought makes the bones quiver while the soul is slain in gratitude. How humbling is the image, and how well we can see His beckoning nature and the pureness of what He offers. If it were not for His mercy and love for us, we could not withstand His gaze in the midst of our imperfections.
But we can have courage that is woven with the threads of humility that helps us accept that we are not so much for God’s eyes to gaze upon in our own right. It is by the power of the cross through Christ that with great anticipation and faintly beating hearts we stand affirmed and can boldly offer our praise and present our petitions.
It is His instruction that we pray continually; at times as joyful utterances or burden laden groans. Not out of routine, but in faith and watchfulness that we may better know his will through spiritual wisdom by the Holy Spirit, and be kept by His power and in His fellowship.
