Do you get something out of prayer? Do you feel better after you pray?

[hrmjustin]

Interfaith post.

Do you have a hard time praying? What do you pray for?

I do at times. I feel unworthy at times and I feel like God is so big and my concerns are so trivial that God has other things to do.

[Htom Sirveaux]

1. In my view, there is nowhere that God is not.

God made all things out of Godself, and that's how anything is sustained. Even the trivial things.

[okasha]

2. That's a good summation of the Native American view.

Because Creator is present in all living things and has a part in all spirits, we can address him/her through more concrete manifestations. I'm Panther Clan, so I sometimes I pray to Panther-with-a-capital-P. If I'm frustrated with someone or something, I'll have a word with Coyote. It's something like praying to patron saints, except there's less distance. They're family.

I pray to give thanks, to ask for healing or strength, to work through problems. Sometimes it's pure meditation, making myself open to whatever I need to know.

And then there's the Chinese kiln goddess. Both my studio's gas kilns have small images of her perched on top. Just before we start a firing, we pay our respects to her and offer her rice and flowers. (Potters all over the world do this, regardless of religion or lack thereof. It 's one of the traditions of the art.)

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

3. It's also a perfectly orthodox Christian view

Thomas Aquinas wrote, "God is what sustains all things in being by his love, and ... is the reason why there is something instead of nothing, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever". (Summa Theologica, I, q 6, art 4.)

[Htom Sirveaux]

8. I've been hoping to hear more about your beliefs and practices,

so thank you for sharing that!

[hrmjustin]

4. That is a greatway of looking st things.

[rug]

5. I have a difficult time with prayer.

I used to pray for God to give me strength to get through things, you know, grit your teeth. "Thy will be done" and all that. Then a priest pointed out, why hunker down to accept God's will? If he is all-good and loves us infinitely, his will is nothing to accept like a dog getting beaten with a stick. It's something to embrace with a glad heart. So, nowadays, my prayer consists of remembering that, feeling his presence, and waiting for the good. I can't even pray for something anymore, even strength. That's for the best. God's not a vending machine.

[hrmjustin]

6. get off your butt and move it.

Thus sayeth the Lord.

[rug]

7. I bet that's not from Leviticus.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

9. No, it's from the book of Nezemiah, 3:17

I cried out, "O Lord, why dost thou ignore my prayer?" And the Lord answered me, "Why criest thou? Thee shouldst get off thy fundament and do thy portion. Why dost thou expect me to do all the heavy lifting?"

More seriously, Augustine says in one of his letters, "I should pray as if everything depended on God, and I should work as if everything depended on me."