The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on May 30, 2025 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
In some cases, we overestimate prayer. In others, we underestimate prayer. By way of overestimation, we are easily tempted to think that prayer will solve all our problems, or better yet, take them all away. Sometimes, we want to use prayer like a magic wand, waving our will and our wants all around. By way of underestimation, we are easily tempted to doubt that prayer does anything. We wonder if our words are a waste of time and we worry about whether prayer “works” if we don’t do it right. Sometimes, we want to abuse prayer like waste, and toss it if it won’t work according to our need.
An antidote to both over and under- estimating prayer is simply to let prayer be what it is, as it is. Maybe prayer won’t fix all problems, but neither is it nothing. It is something. It is what it is. To honor prayer for what it is, as it is, reminds me of a helpful definition of humility.
Mistaken notions of humility associate humility with humiliation. But humility is really an antidote to pride—too much focus on oneself, and we can overly focus on ourselves both by thinking too much of ourselves, and also by thinking too little of ourselves. To be humble is simply to be what you actually are, no more and no less, or in a theological sense, to earnestly work at being who you are called to be.
When we allow both prayer, and ourselves, to simply be what we are, as we are, then there is no need for magical, nor worrisome prayer, because the mysterious lure of the working Hand of the Holy One helps to pull the “more” from what already is, out of both our prayer and our persons, in order to shape both, more humbly, into a powerful force for Good, also known, simply for what it is, as Love.
