Article April 24, 1989 Issue

Nonstop prayer

There's never a better time for prayer than right now!

Eleanor Buser

Is it impossible to pray unceasingly? No! During a troubled family situation I found myself thinking, "I must sit down and pray about this," adding, "when I finish what I'm doing." How wrong I was. I was thinking of the deep prayer that would be needed to heal the difficulty as something I could do only by taking time out to pray—when it was convenient. But when I thought of Paul's urging "Pray without ceasing," I Thess. 5:17. I realized that my concept of prayer was rather limited and wondered, "Do I really know how to pray?"

Prayer manifests an individual's longing for more faith, for a purer love and deeper understanding of God. There is no stopping the unvarying prayer that acknowledges God as perfect and man as created in His image. We do not mentally put up a sign "Out to lunch." Prayer cannot be limited to time and place, for it is one's acknowledgment that God is All. Can this be slowed down, hampered, or disrupted? The answer is an emphatic no.

Our desire to express Godlike qualities in everything we pursue is constant prayer. It enables us to be joyful, grateful, loving. It is the means by which we affirm our inseparability from good. "The habitual struggle to be always good," writes Mrs. Eddy, "is unceasing prayer."Science and Health, p. 4.

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