‘I’ll be praying for you’ is a phrase that falls between ‘I am thinking of you’ and ‘I will drop off a casserole.’ It affirms a social bond – benevolent intentions embodied in words and mediated by a shared belief in a God who, if nothing else, will note the exchange.Read more here.
... Islamic salat, the five-times-daily prayer obligation, is highly structured and choreographed. Like the daily office of Christian monasticism, it is a textual recitation stretched across the hours. Here is something more akin to a sacrifice than a conversation. One early source, the Kitab al-Salat, is greatly concerned with the timing of the act and much less with its subjective context and emotive purpose. ‘If anyone performs ablution for them well, offers them at their (right) time, and observes perfectly their bowing and submissiveness in them, it is the guarantee of Allah that He will pardon him,’ the Kitab records; ‘if anyone does not do so, there is no guarantee for him on the part of Allah.’
...prayer is multifarious. It can aim to shift the world’s netting of causes and effects, to strengthen communal bonds, even to resist an economic and political order. But perhaps its most venerable function is to shape the moral disposition of the worshipper.
Dueholm links to Toast, which he refers to as a culture and humor site. Nicole Cliffe writes there about becoming a Christian on July 7, 2015, after being an atheist her entire life.
Most days, I really look forward to my end-of-day prayers as a time when God and I get to have a conversation: I talk, and he talks back to me, in whatever form that takes (nagging, mainly, but we can get to that later.) I pray during the day as well, like sometimes I feel a stupid burst of love for the produce guy at the store, and I’ll pray for him, or I’ll stop what I’m doing (probably tweeting) and just want to express how grateful I am for my life and its goodness. Or I’ll be gripped by anxiety or fear or worry about one of my kids, and I’ll just toss out a oh, man, God, please be with me, today.Read more here.
...It’s the end-of-day prayers, though, that are the meat of my prayer life, and they follow a sort of general pattern. I start with the Lord’s Prayer, because it’s like a little incantation that places a barrier between me watching Brooklyn Nine Nine and me engaging in a searching moral inventory of my life, which, personally, I find is a big help. Then I go over my day, with God, and the things I did, and the things I wish I had done differently. Sometimes I’m just “yeah, that was not my best moment, there” and I move on and it doesn’t come up again, but if I find that I think about it during prayer TWO nights in a row, I probably need to do something about it.
...The next thing I do is express gratitude. For my life, and what I have in it, and my job, and for individual people. It’s been really good for my marriage to express gratitude for my husband, I have to say. It is very meaningful to thank God or the universe or whatever that a person is in your life and a source of joy to you, and I have been nicer and more patient and more appreciative of him, and several other people, because I think of them as a gift to be grateful for.
...Now we get into the good stuff: asking for shit.
I ask for everything! Dallas Willard, whose books and life were a real gateway drug for me, once told a friend of his who was going through a just terrible, terrible thing, that you don’t really need to say I mean, God, ultimately I want your will to be done, so only do these things if it’s your will, because, duh, God already knows that his will is what’s going to happen. So go ahead and ask for what you truly want. Is it going to happen? I mean, maybe. The world is a really broken and tragic place. Why would God make my stupid redesign transition flawless because I asked him to, but allow horrible things to happen to innocent people constantly? I don’t know, I’ll ask him about it when I meet him. But I still ask for what I want. Big stuff, little stuff. And for me to be a better person, which is the main thing. I definitely said “I’m still the same person!” to a bunch of friends when I converted, but it’s not really true. I’m not that great, honestly, and I want to be better, so I ask for help with that. I think it’s working, but really slowly.
...Next, and finally, comes my hands-down favourite part of prayer, and the part that I think is great REGARDLESS of your beliefs or lack thereof: praying for other people. I say this because it teaches you who you love, and who’s important to you. What problems facing others have you taken on as your own? Does this change how you deal with them in real life? Can YOU help answer these prayers with money or time or by listening, etc.? I pray for my family, and I pray for my friends, and I pray for Toasties who have said things in Open Threads that I think they could use some help with, and I pray for the people I make this site with, and I pray for people who are sick, or who have sick boyfriends, and I pray for bigger world stuff, and by the time I’m done, I’ve realized that I love all these people I’ve prayed for (you can throw up now), and that’s very meaningful to me.
...Sometimes it’s much easier to pray for someone else than to ask them to pray for you. Especially if you’re someone like me, who’s really hung up on seeming like I have my shit together. I find it really hard to be vulnerable about things.
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