Throughout history mankind has practiced some type of prayer. It has taken many forms from offerings and human sacrifices to extravagant pageantry to simple meditation. Early man tried to appease what he perceived as manipulative super-humans by offerings of things he considered necessities such as food and weapons. When that didn’t seem to be enough, he tried offering life’s pleasures in the form of luxuries, wealth, music, dance and other diversions. Along the way, man tried sacrificing the things he himself held dear; cattle, children who were pure and innocent, or by forsaking his own life and fortune in favor of poverty and service to others.
When practices seemed to work they were repeated and became traditional among families then villages and societies at large. Spoken prayers had a number of purposes long before they were directed to one specific deity. Depending on the need and the god or goddess involved, prayers took the form of appeasement, apology, confession, pleas, promises or bargains.
As civilization progressed and knowledge and understanding replaced superstition and idolatry, prayer became a ritual, sometimes so automatic as to be relatively meaningless. Prayers were standardized and recited, often without thought given to the meaning of the words being spoken. How many of us, as children, recited “Now I lay me down to sleep …” without giving thought to that “soul” we were asking “the Lord to keep” without believing that we could possibly “die before I wake” or having any idea of what “blessings” we were asking to be bestowed on our parents, siblings, best friends, favorite aunts and generous neighbors. We were probably much more specific and sincere when we wrote those letters to Santa Claus.
I think that everyone, whether or not they adhere to an organized religion, has an awareness of the need to explain our very existence. We wonder, though perhaps infrequently, how the world came to be, and marvel at the magic of nature, the miracle of reproduction, the mysteries of chemistry, the phenomena of seasons. Religions are the outcome of all those questions, and prayer has become a part of our reaction to and investigation of those puzzles.
Designating one day out of the year for a national awareness of prayer is not going to change much in the story of mankind’s search for the answers. It is not likely to bring the non-praying people to their penitent knees, nor is it going to add much to the beliefs of those who regularly pray for whatever reason. At best, it may foster a little introspection in some of us and cause us to consider just what the practice of praying does for us.
Some people don’t believe in prayer because their prayers are, so they say, never answered. Never answered as they desire, I suspect. In a way, I guess all prayers are answered; sometimes the answer is “yes” or “not now” or simply “no”. Prayer does have a justifiable purpose and benefit.
For myself, I don’t consider prayer to be necessarily an aspect of an organized religion. In fact, I realize that many people, who do not consider themselves to be religious at all, often do what might be defined as praying. It becomes a sort of self-assessment that involves “discussing” one’s own feelings and beliefs with an alternative “self” if not with a definable deity. The benefits of this introspection are many, and I believe are truly answers to prayer, depending on what a person prays for. In times of indecision we pray for wisdom, thus reminding ourselves that we should seek advice. Simply asking to be granted patience is admitting to ourselves that we should be more tolerant. Pleading for strength in a trying situation can help us resolve to seek the assistance of those people in our lives who may need our support as much as we need theirs and that we could help each other. When we pray for intervention we are identify things that need to be changed and begin to think of ways we might change them. Above all, praying for forgiveness can remind us that we must first admit our errors and forgive ourselves.