Article February 23, 2009 Issue

HEARTS OPEN to GOD

BY GINGER MACK

WHEN I was younger, I used to think that if I was truly reverent, the Bible's instruction to "pray without ceasing" (I Thess. 5:17) meant that I should be repeating some prayer all day long. As you can imagine, I was relieved to learn that this wasn't the case—there's a lot more to prayer than just saying (or thinking) the right words. Prayer, I've found, happens when we allow our hearts to be open to God.

In high school, I learned that prayer doesn't originate in your head. Whether I was challenged by an academic assignment or feeling troubled by sickness, I exercised this idea of turning to God for help and healing. The more I practiced this, the more I learned that prayer isn't like choosing a mantra. Instead, prayer is a spiritual listening. I've always loved this passage from the Bible: "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:7).

As time passed, concerns about school and getting into college abated, when I began to enjoy the ways in which God was already caring for me and everyone. I realized that my humble desire to express purity, wholeness, to trust good, and to live my life in harmony with the rest of God's creation, was a kind of prayer in itself.