June 2015 Prayer Column - Prayers shaken (and stirred)

I tried a new kind of drawing the other day: buspics. When I’m on a bus I hold a pen over my sketch book and let the shaking of the bus make the movement, while I direct my hand slowly this way or that, as a picture emerges – I really don’t know what it will be to start with. It could be a house, or a river in a field, or in this case roadside trees. Things are a bit approximate, but something always appears. It’s fun, because I used to think I couldn’t draw on buses or trains.

What’s this got to do with prayer? After all you can pray well enough on a bus can’t you? Yes, of course, and what you see may very usefully trigger your prayers. But I was thinking of when your thoughts fly all over the place, like the point of my pen as the bus lurches round corners. We tend to think we need to be quiet and still to pray properly, but perhaps shaky-about prayers sometimes have a place too. If the Holy Spirit can handle groans too deep for words (Rom 8:26), surely he can equally well gather mental squiggles into something meaningful for God, when that’s all we can do.

I’m not saying such prayers are better than others, but they’re not useless either. The really important thing is to pray, linking with God, however you can, wherever you are.

Roy LS

A prayer for each week

Lord, it’s one of those times. I just can’t concentrate. Thoughts of prayer jump about in my head but won’t come together. Please can you accept them as the best I can do, at least for now, in your mercy. Amen.

Lord, I don’t know why, but I just can’t think straight at the moment. The words won’t come. I can’t say to you what I want, not properly. So please will you just accept my heart’s longing, through Jesus. Amen.

Lord, I’m all of a dither today. My mind won’t focus or settle down. Is it alright for me to pray just a thought here, a thought there? Please, Holy Spirit, can you spin those strands together somehow. Amen.

Lord, I’ve too much on, and there’s so much wrong – where do I begin? I no sooner start on one, than something else pushes in. Can I just name people, and problems, and places: will that do as prayer, today? Amen.

Your own prayers