The practice of prayer gradually simplifies our desires.

We come to the practice of prayer with many needs and hopes. They’re jumbled, often contradictory, a strange mix of the altruistic and selfish. Mostly they’re about what we would like to see God do. Occasionally, though, some of our desires transcend such limits and celebrate God. If we try to list all our desires, we may well start to wonder if God really wants to deal with such a mess!

Go and read some of the Psalms. Don’t skim them. Read them slowly. It’s best if you read them aloud. You’ll find the ancient people of God brought quite a variety of needs, feelings, and hopes to God. Apparently, God could handle it. He still can. Truth to tell, we start from where we are when we begin the practice of prayer.

Make no mistake, though: over time the practice of prayer changes us. We find ourselves praying not so much for God to make things happen “out there,” as for God to shape us into his kind of people.

St. Francis of Assisi provides the model of such prayer.When I find myself pulled in multiple directions by the demands of family, work and others, I pray the prayer attributed to Francis. It centers me.

Why not try it for yourself. The prayer goes as follows.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.


O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood , as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Mike Smith