Make my life a prayer
When conflicts feel big and far away, putting our prayers into practice in our own lives gives them wings.
I once heard someone answer the question, “What would you do differently if you had the chance?” with “I would make my life a prayer.”
When I am praying about difficult situations in the world, part of what I am attentive to is to really work to follow that model and make my life a prayer. In other words, I seek to put into practice in my own day-to-day experiences what I am praying about for others, and to be open to fresh, God-inspired solutions that change the storyline.
With the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and the many other conflicts happening right now, I have been praying about the God-given ability for people in all the various factions to move beyond entrenched positions to openness to new solutions and approaches. This prayer rests on the trust that God, good, who is the all-knowing Mind, continuously communicates pertinent spiritual ideas that bring to light inspiration and potential solutions which respond to and meet everyone’s specific needs.
My prayer is that the people involved are able to hear and respond to ideas from the divine Mind which lead toward civility, provision, resolution, and peace. As sons and daughters of God, we are created to be responsive to divine direction. We have an inherent perceptiveness of inspiration, because we are the spiritual expressions of Mind, which is the source of answers that result in genuine progress.
A unique aspect of prayer in Christian Science is the impetus to start with the solution by asking the Divine to reveal what it already knows to be true about all that are involved in a situation, rather than starting with the problem and trying to work out how to somehow get to a place of progress. This solution-oriented approach comes from Scripture, as when the prophet Isaiah recorded God saying, “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:9, 10).
In other words, divine Mind knows, and shows right up front, the truth about its absolute presence, power, and goodness. As Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, wrote, “The finite must yield to the infinite,” and that can happen in a moment (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 256).
I recently experienced how putting my prayers for others into action in my own life gives a particular power and legitimacy to those prayers. When I pulled up to a parking lot for a trailhead on public land where I was planning to go for a hike with a friend, I saw that a large group had commandeered the parking lot and turned it into a camp. As I parked, they approached my truck, yelling at me to leave. They made it clear that they didn’t want anyone else in the lot, and that if I parked and left my truck, they would damage it. Things were not heading in a good direction, so I paused and prayed.
I asked God for guidance as to how to see these men as God already did and how to respond as a son of God and not from a standpoint of frustration. I had no doubt that the true, Spirit-created nature of the men involved had to be reflective of the goodness and peace of their source, God. What came in inspiration was that God knew these people as blessed – not based on their actions, but rather, based on knowing their real God-created spiritual identity.
Then I said out the window to the group, “God bless you.” This was not with sarcasm; I really felt it. All the tension left. Each person went back to what they were doing. There were no further problems. Although it was clear to me that I could have safely remained in the parking spot I was in, I felt that same Christly spirit that had diffused the situation gently nudging me to park at another spot nearby – convinced that anyone else pulling into the lot would receive a courteous welcome.
It felt like God’s presence was shining for us to see. And my receptivity to that presence came from humble, listening prayer and being willing to see a storyline that expressed God’s design, instead of the tension and conflict that had momentarily seemed to be in the driver’s seat.
That evening, as I was praying about the current conflict in the Middle East, I knew that people there could be experiencing in significant ways the sort of peaceful resolution that I had just experienced.
When we individually pause, pray for those in need, and then seek to make our own lives a prayer that reflects our hopes for others, we can trust that those lived prayers are making a difference collectively. They help reveal fresh God-inspired solutions that lead to more harmonious storylines in places of conflict around the globe.