I think God knows pretty well what I am going to say before I say it.  Sometimes I think my parishioners know what I am going to say before I say it.   Most of us become predictable.  It is not hard to anticipate and expect certain reactions, conversation and conduct from people whom we love.  If we really love them, that is.

Funny about that.  When I first started getting serious about having an impacting prayer life, it was some kind of formula deal with me.  I would get in the right position.  Find the right place.  Say the right things.  Say them the right way.  And shazam! a miracle would happen.  If the prayer was not answered right, then I assumed that somehow I had missed the formula for miracles.

Then I went through an impulsive, emotional praying stage.  Somehow if I cried enough.  Or prayed hard enough.  Or confessed enough sin and orneriness, then God was bound to get busy.

After that it was casual, conversational, sometimes cute and always a clever prayer.  Especially public prayers.  And the non-conventional, clever phrases became conformist clichés.  This was the kind of prayer people talked about.  Fun to listen to and fun to do.

Often these were an exercise in futility.  I have tried to pray when I did not want to.  When there was not anything to say, when I didn’t really believe what I was saying.  When I wondered where God was and sometimes even wondered “if” He was.

Jerry T. Cook 

Real Life.  Real Love.