Hard Questions about Prayer

So, what is prayer?

Practical, ‘how to do it' questions are important; and answers are not always easy to find.  But there are other kinds of problems with prayer too, hard questions which tax the mind.  Questions like: Is anybody listening?  What is the point?  What good does it do?  What is it all about?  How does it work?

Generally speaking these questions are easily answered if you think of prayer as meditation, relaxation, reflection or simply being still and silent.  They get more difficult when we get to prayer which uses words.  Prayer as adoration, confession and thanksgiving is relatively straightforward, but praying for others and asking God for things raises huge questions.  And much depends in all prayer on what we think about God and what we believe about him.   

So, what is prayer? 

Brother Lawrence, a lay brother in the Carmelite monastery in Paris in the seventeenth century, called prayer the ‘practice of the presence of God'. 

Or we might say that ‘Prayer is communication and communion, spoken and unspoken, between us and God.' 

Or that ‘Prayer is being with God'.  God is with us all the time, always and everywhere, of course, but we're usually too busy to notice.  Prayer is when we stop, notice and respond. 

Or just that ‘Prayer is conversation with God.'  And like all good conversation it involves talking, listening and silence.

This ‘being with God', this ‘communication', this ‘conversation' can take many forms: public or private, formal or informal, corporate or individual, with words or without words, momentary or sustained, regular or occasional, speaking or listening.