Article August 4, 1986 Issue

Prayer in a busy world

LILLIAN B. DEWEY

Have you ever wished you had just a few more moments in your day to pray and feel close to God? You've no doubt learned that your prayers for yourself and the world are vitally important. God's love is impelling you to draw close to Him, and so you make quiet time daily for study and prayer. But we don't need to be without inspiration and healing all during the rest of our day. We might ask ourselves, "Am I making use of my active moments as well as my quiet ones?"

Look at the life of Christ Jesus. It was necessary for him to retreat to pray at times, and he certainly must have prayed during those forty days in the wilderness! Yet during his ministry much of his time was spent in actively helping others—visiting in homes, teaching in the temple, healing in many public places, providing the wine at the wedding in Cana, teaching and then feeding a hungry crowd of five thousand, preaching and healing as he traveled. There's no evidence that he allowed his daily activities to interfere with his inspiration. In fact, he proved that each encounter, however modest, is always an opportunity to glorify God, no matter what one is doing. He left his disciples this promise: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." John 15:16. We should cherish this promise in praying for ourselves and expect our own discipleship to bear fruits that glorify God.

Once when I had a very busy schedule, I greatly yearned to draw closer to God in prayer. My children were young, and there wasn't much time during the day to get off to myself. I was a new student of Christian Science, and I longed to understand more. Finally it became clear that it wasn't being the mother of two small children that was challenging my time and thought. It was the carnal mind's argument of intelligence and life separate from God, the fundamental error that Jesus came to destroy.

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