Prayer

"Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts."
— Mother Teresa

“Prayer for others…. is the very beat of a compassionate heart. To pray for a friend that is ill, for a student who is depressed, for a teacher who is in conflict; for people in prison, in hospitals, on battlefields – is not a futile effort to influence God’s will, but a hospitable gesture by which we invite our neighbors into the center of our hearts. To pray for others means to allow their pains and sufferings, their anxieties and loneliness, their confusion and fears to resound in our innermost selves….It is in and through us that God’s Spirit touches them with his healing presence.” — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Are you like me? Do you wish prayer to me more pro-active? I don't pray to win the lottery, I don't even pray for world peace, or that a friend may be healed, but I like to think that in praying for others, I can ask God to send them grace, grace being in my lexicon an enabling gift. A gift of faith, a gift of comfort, a gift of wisdom. As we pray in the requiem, let the perpetual light shine upon them.

But these wise and holy contemporaries seem to be telling us that only we will be affected by our prayer, and that through our changed selves will God reach others.
Not much of a fast track, there, since I, at least, am able and willing to reach out to so few and not as generously as is needed.

But then we are reminded:
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."
— Mother Teresa

Perhaps, I should try a little harder.
.