Praying For Humanity
2026-03-07
These days, I find myself in a relaxing tedium. I'll take that over being manic or depressed every day. For the first time in a long time, things feel predictable. I finally feel like I have some kind of grasp over myself and my circumstances. I feel more confident in who I am, and who I wish to become. I do my best to let my faith ground me and attend to it through prayer as much as I can, even if there are days where I pray less than usual. Over the last several weeks, I fell out of my morning and evening prayer rule. What I ended up doing instead was a quicker version of the Jesus Prayer (simply, "Lord, have mercy"), and on some days I would do several runs around the prayer rope, reciting the prayer thousands of times.
It was a good thing, but it made me lose my steam on prayer in general. Weirdly enough, even with certain strategies in place to make it easier, it was still mentally taxing. However, I take that as a perspective on the depths that one can have in prayer. To me, it's not a shortcoming, but a sign of just how much work there is to do. I remember seeing this documentary, a series called Extreme Pilgrim. In each episode, a British priest would live under different monastic traditions around the world and try to glean different universal truths from all of his experiences. In the episode I watched, he spent some time in the Egyptian desert with Father Lazarus, a modern desert monk living under the same conditions as Saint Anthony. Specifically, there was a clip where Father Lazarus discussed prayer. To loosely paraphrase, he said that when he prays, the whole world benefits.
I realized that the same is true for me. When I pray, I do so not just for myself, but for all of humanity.
That really puts the true purpose of prayer in perspective. Coming loosely from more Protestant traditions, I was used to seeing prayer as this performative thing. More than that, it seemed that most people I knew used prayer like a slot machine: they say what they want for themselves and expect God to make it so. If they prayed enough, God would hear them and bend the world to their will. Of course, many of those Protestants I prayed with had benevolent intentions; they would pray for their loved ones' safety and prosperity. While that's a noble and good thing, I found that it didn't speak to the essence of prayer itself.
There were many Protestants who asked God for simple and sometimes selfish things. "Lord, I pray that I pass my exams tomorrow. Lord, I pray that I get that sale at work." Coming to God at all is a good thing, and I don't diminish the efforts of those Protestants to have Him assuage their anxieties about outcomes they can't control. However, I think it's important to understand that we don't pray so that God makes our lives better. We pray so that God can help us understand His will and walk with us through the challenges of everyday life. Most of the time, that involves understanding the idea that what we want out of life can be flawed, and that we need the Lord to help us reframe our judgment so that we can better walk with Him, especially when times get tough.
It's easy to praise God when things are going well, but much harder to maintain that gratitude when something horrible happens to us. I've met many people who grew up Christian and were raised in Protestant churches, and when life begins to get rough in some kind of way or they have questions that don't have straight answers, they give up their faith completely and begin to rely on other things for comfort and respite. I don't condemn those people for doing so; in spite of their lack of faith, they are still decent and humble folks. More than that, I've been in the same position as them, so it would be hypocritical of me to pass any kind of judgment. However, as I've come back to my faith and strengthened it over the last few years, my hope is that more people around me can do the same. I know that ultimately, their decisions are out of my control.
But like Father Lazarus said, my prayers can help all of humanity.
This isn't to say that God keeps any kind of score. His judgment will always be beyond our understanding. But the most important thing is to stay aligned with Him by keeping our hearts pursuant in prayer. It's a constant act of calibration, and it can be easy to forget about God's infinite love and mercy. In spite of that, prayer is one of the most accessible divine actions we can perform. Any time, in any place, and under any circumstance, we can always reach out to Christ and pray. Whether it be out loud or silently in our minds, in public or in private, in church or a dive bar, God hears all of it and wants only the best for us. Even if we can't fully see the road ahead, we can keep Psalm 119:105 in our minds and hearts:
"Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path."
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