Prayer Journal

Years ago when we lived in Illinois and attended a tiny branch (small congregation) of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint,  a new family arrived who had just moved to the area.  It didn't take  long to notice that the mother of the family always had with her a few pieces of paper all folded together.  She didn't flaunt it around for all to notice, but sometimes during a lesson she would take it out, write a thing or two on it and then put it away.

After observing this and other similar instances a few times, I asked her what the 'papers' were all about.  She pulled out her tattered papers which had been folded and unfolded many times and showed them to me.  On one side was a list of names and on the other side was a word or two to remind her why she added that individual to her prayer list. 

 The list was long and it included names of her family, members of our branch, strangers like the lady at the grocery store, and friends.  I thought I am standing in the presence of a spiritual giant.  She indeed is a spiritual giant and I believe she must spend a considerable amount of time in prayer each day. I also thought I want to be like that too. My intentions were good, but my follow through was not equal.  My prayer list never really made it out of the 'idea' phase and into a well implemented plan.

Then several years later I read the book, "The Help."  A couple of sentences stood out to me.  Aibileen says, “Can’t be much different than writing my prayers every night. Find I can get my point across a lot better writing em down. I write a hour, sometimes two ever day. Lot a ailing, sick peoples in this town.” There it  was again, a little different, but mostly the same idea. There were several other experiences that I noticed and they all began to form a cluster of sources pointing to the same idea, a prayer list/journal, but for the sake of brevity I won't include them all.

The final straw came when I recalled reading a quote  by Pesident Dieter F. Uchtdorf in the May 2011 "Ensign."  "Too often we attend meetings and nod our heads; we might even smile knowingly and agree. We jot down some action points, and we may say to ourselves, 'That is something I will do.' But somewhere between the hearing, the writing of a reminder on our smartphone, and the actual doing, our 'do it' switch get rotated to the the 'later' position. Brethren, let's make sure to set our 'do it' switch always to the 'now' position." It was as if Heavenly Father were asking me, Do you hear me now? Have you connected the dots yet?  I am trying to show you something.

I now have a prayer journal.  I write down thoughts and names in it, and it allows me to pray more sincerely and specifically.  It gives me a greater purpose and a deeper connection. I don't read from it when I pray, but rather use it as cues if I get distracted or forgetful. For what it's worth to the few people who read this blog, it's worth the try.  Maybe it will work for you or maybe your way of learning and connecting is different, but for me it works.