Life as a Prayer

The scriptures advise us to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Most of us think of prayer as folding our arms and bowing our heads, or kneeling down and talking to God about what we need and what we are grateful for. But prayer is as much an attitude as it is words. After encouraging the people to pray without ceasing, Paul tells them, “In every thing give thanks.” Again we might think of this as stopping what ever we are doing, bowing, and verbally expressing thanks in prayer. But there are other ways to give thanks.

Try an experiment. Whatever you do today fill you mind and heart with thoughts about how grateful you are for that thing or something connected to it. For example, when preparing a meal think about how grateful you are for the food or how grateful you are to have two hands that work. While cleaning your house, think about how grateful you are for a house that is a haven from the world, or think about the wonderful modern tools that make cleaning so easy. When doing even the grossest jobs such as changing a dirty diaper, think about what a privilege it is to serve one of God’s children by doing for them what they cannot do for themselves. Whatever you are doing all day long, think of what you are grateful for—think constantly about the great blessing it is to be an instrument in God’s hands to serve others and to do His work on earth.

After a day of this, meditate for a few moments on what happened to you. Review the events of the day and how different you felt when concentrating on gratitude. One thing you will notice is that by being constantly grateful your life itself became a prayer.