“Challenging Prayer Fatigue”
Prayer is thinking, thinking of God, thinking of others. What is fatigue, but the burden of mortality. So the antidote is the lifting up to immortality, the prayer that puts us in the presence of Spirit, the consciousness of God and His creation. Jesus said, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.”
When our thought feels heavy by the issues of the flesh, this profits us nothing. Haven’t we felt quite a bit of that lately from Haiti to Chile? But the prayer of the Spirit quickens, enlivens us, because God, Spirit alone is Life. God, Spirit, alone is good, the good that is needed. Prayer brings energy, newness of life to thought and action, right where the flesh is profiting nothing.
Prayer is something we all can do and is proven to have an effect on the object, situation for which we pray; a powerful combatant to a feeling of hopelessness, apathy or fatigue. Prayer is something we must do, so we don’t mentally resign ourselves to more of profitless mortality. Prayer is what is most needed to bless and reaches farther than any action we can ever take, as well as impel and fuel the benevolent actions we may be guided to take. Prayer for me, reveals God’s right, intelligent ideas and actions that adjust, calm, comfort, align, heal, provide, uplift and unite first with God’s Love and then with that natural reflection of His love and goodness in Her creation.
As we stay with prayer, it frees and strengthens us to not just endure, but overcome. It is a source of supply of good that we can’t find through the mortal perspective, even though we continually look to its lack and are surprised to keep finding its temporal nature so unfulfilling. I think we are surprised because our innate spirituality is always looking home to the perfect Principle that underlies all that really is. We just forgot to look and start from the right standpoint in order to reach the right conclusion, God.
In a world where materialism has tried to put God on the sidelines, we find ourselves spiritually hungry and needing to reevaluate our premises. But in this reevaluation, let’s make sure we have an intelligent view of God too, an understanding beyond making Deity a variable, glorified manlike god to the worship of the Almighty “in spirit and in truth,” as Jesus tells us. Then our prayers help us interpret all things spiritually, through God, not look at mortality and materiality and base God on that basis. We will also stop giving law and causation solely to matter and its variableness and give that authority back to its original Source, a constant, eternal Principle, divine Spirit.
What a change this would bring to our expectations and forecasts for the future. Isn’t this what Jesus knew and saw that enabled him to heal? A divine law or divine Science on which to base understanding and prayer? Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, commented of her Lord, “Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause.” Now that is the kind of prayer that is needed today, a prayer that Jesus showed us will actually calm the sea instead of teetering on a fragile foundation of the earth’s shifting premises and stormy outlooks.
Anne Cooling
Sunday School Superintendent
First Church of Christ, Scientist, Laguna Niguel
