Patterns for Christian Prayer

Over the years, prayer seems to be one of the things the Lord has worked the hardest to teach me.

One of the things I have learned is that the Bible is the best prayer book.

I pray the Psalms. I pray the prayers that the apostle Paul prayed for the believers to whom he wrote his letters.

I pray various other prayers that are embedded in the scriptures.

I find other sources as well, in odd little corners.

Back in my “young mom” years, I read a novel by Elizabeth Goudge titled The Scent of Water.

The protagonist, Mary, a London dweller, inherits a house from a cousin of her father’s, and moves to a small English village to live in it.

In the house she finds the diary of the woman who left it to her.

I can’t remember now whether the conversation that so struck me is recorded in the diary or is one between Mary and the current vicar.

No matter.

The vicar comments,

“There are only three necessary prayers, you know.

‘Lord, have mercy,’

‘Thee I adore,’

‘Not my will.’

Those three succinct little sentences mesh nicely with the pattern for prayer that Jesus himself gave us.

“Thee I adore—Hallowed be Thy name.”

“Lord have mercy—Forgive us our sins and Lead us not into temptation.”

and

“Not my will—Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

So, some days, I begin with that short, beautiful little pattern.

They are, in a sense, all that is necessary.