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Today's
Meditation:
I fully
believe in the strength of prayer, though I don't believe
that the positive results of prayer are limited to the
members of any particular faith or creed. The power
of prayer comes from our desire to change things, to make
things better, to persevere through problems and to make
our ways through life growing wiser and kinder and more
compassionate as we go. The decision to pray is a
decision to make ourselves better people and to put into
motion the thoughts and the emotions that will help us to
become such.
Personally,
when I pray I find that I grow in clarity and I feel
stronger just as a result of having prayed. Prayer
helps me to sort through things and see what really is
important. When I was younger, I thought that prayer
was about asking for things and waiting until they
miraculously appeared in my life. They didn't appear
very often, though, and since then I've learned that
prayer is more about sorting through the chaff and coming
to a realization of what's truly best in a given situation
rather than simply asking for what I want at the moment.
Prayer
is strong. When I pray for someone else's benefit,
I'm setting into motion my own powers to aid, and I truly
believe that others know we're praying for them whether we
tell them so or not-- and the fact that someone else is
praying for us shows us that someone else cares, which is
a huge help in itself. Prayer isn't about making
others what we think they should be-- it's asking for the
best for the other person, and when we do that, we're
creating power. Of course, prayer doesn't always
come true, but that simply means that the other person
isn't ready to change, or that what we're asking for is
too specific and isn't really for the best (no matter how
much we may believe to the contrary).
I'm
guilty of not praying enough. I want to be a person
who prays for others, mostly to keep them in mind and to
use some of the energy I have to focus on them and the
possible positive outcomes in their lives. That
said, though, I also know that prayer isn't necessarily
getting down on our knees and beseeching God to do
something-- a positive thought or three while we're taking
a walk, focused on the good in others, is just as much a
prayer as anything else.
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