Prayers

I pray. A lot. I pray about all kinds of things. I sign up for churches to email me their congregations’ prayer requests. I go through my Facebook friends’ statuses daily and pray for their needs, whether they ask me to or not. I get individual prayer requests in my email. I pray when I see something on the news that catches my eye and tugs at my heart. I pray around the holidays for the lonely and poor. I pray when someone dies; I pray when someone is born. I pray when something excites me. I pray when something scares me. I pray when something saddens me.

Basically, I pray a lot.

And although I believe with all of my heart that prayer is a very powerful tool on the lips of faithful followers of Christ, I often find myself wondering whether praying about something is keeping me from actually doing anything of significance.

Please don’t hear me wrong. I did not say that praying is insignificant. I just wonder if sometimes I pray for God to do something when it is completely within my own means to reach out with my time, talent or treasure and help. I just don’t want to sit on my butt, praying that God helps my friend get through her day while she’s sick as a dog, when I am perfectly capable of calling and asking her if I can run an errand for her or bring her some dinner and some Kleenex or watch her kids for a couple of hours while she visits the doc or takes a nap.

I just don’t want to allow my prayer life to keep me in a state of complacency.

I think if I just spend some time thinking about how I can be more involved in what I’m asking God to do, I can experience the joy of seeing answered prayers firsthand. God can do anything we ask Him to and more, but WE are His ‘Plan A’ when it comes to answering prayers. At least, that’s what it seems like to me. So it doesn’t make any sense for me to pray and then not take action when I can. To not consider how I can help actually keeps me and those I could be helping from experiencing God’s Kingdom here on earth.