Venturing Forth

Over the years the praying I have done has been offered to the Father in all sorts of forms and shapes.  Some might say my ritual of prayer has changed from time to time.  Of course, the constant has been the praying.  None of this is to say that I have been as faithful to the practice as I could have been, but to simply confess that praying has always been a part of my faith walk with the One who knew me in the days before the beginning. 

 

Somewhere along this journey of praying, I came to a place of writing prayers and sending them not only to God, but to the persons for whom I was praying.  At first there was a hesitancy to pray the prayers in a written form lest it seem that the writing was more important than the praying.  Jesus did remind us in the Sermon on the Mount to be careful about the motive of our prayers.  Praying in secret is not exactly done when the words are put on paper for someone else to read.  And, of course, there is always the danger of thinking too highly of the arrangement of the wording of the prayer.  (Matthew 6:5-8)  

Nonetheless, I chose to venture forth into what was at the time a different way of praying.  Of course, as I began I realized I was only walking in the steps of the Apostle Paul who wrote prayers in the middle of theological discourses.  (Ephesians 1:17ff, 3:16ff.)  One of the things I have come to understand about praying for others is that being in the presence of someone who is praying for me is in itself a blessing.  I always know it is not something anyone has to do for me, but something they choose to do.  It is my prayer that my written prayers arrive before the one for whom I pray in such a way that they are aware of my desire to somehow kneel before them, but most importantly that they experience being in the presence of our Father God who desires to bring blessings.