Monday, March 4, 2024
“Pray for 15 Minutes, Uninterrupted”
Today could be any day of the week. It happens to be Monday but it could just as easily be Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday.
Whatever has happened today is already beyond our control, but we may discover that the events of the past inspire us to pray on behalf of the person or situation involved. Prayers for someone who has become ill or injured, for instance, is one. Another might be our prayers for something specifically brought to our attention, such as financial distress, hunger, or military conflict.
Sometimes, it’s the events that haven’t yet occurred today that drive our prayers: A student praying for a test or project to be completed and graded, while others might pray for the removal of physical pain, emotional distress, or the successful completion of an important meeting later today.
Prayers can come in all shapes and sizes, involving diverse material that uniquely inspires us to ask for God’s help, blessing, or assurance. I’m guessing that those of us who pray regularly have a specific pattern or rhythm to our prayers. For the most part, it’s often the same people and material included in all of our prayers, and that’s a good thing.
However, it is also good to pray for new things, including things that never (or rarely) race across our minds. These prayers are just as valuable, but because of our own lens of discernment, we rarely visit the other items.
Today’s Lenten Challenge is to Pray for Fifteen Minutes, without interruption. Again, this should be an easy Challenge to complete, but once we begin, we’ll likely discover that it’s far more difficult than we expected. Praying for this long without interruption will require us to schedule some private time in which we don’t expect any texts, emails, or phone calls. For many of us, it will be nearly impossible for us to make that happen. It’s going to require us to silence our phones, computers, and tablets for a while we make this Challenge a priority.
Why should one participate in this Challenge? Precisely because it will force us to look beyond our typical prayer items to locate people and/or events that are outside of our boxes of interest or enthusiasm.
A prayer is easy to compose. Prayer, simply put, is communication with God. Some prayers are spoken, other prayers are written, while still other prayers are thought. All methods will qualify today, as long as we give our LORD fifteen minutes of undivided attention.
What will you pray for today? Let’s get busy getting our list together. Our prayers can be for the past, present, or future, and our prayers can be offered by whatever method is available to us. Can we do it? Yes, we can!
Pray for Fifteen Minutes Today, Uninterrupted!
“Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, NLT)
