Making Prayer a Priority

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She openeth her mouth with wisdom...
• Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.

Last week I discussed a little bit about different tools and techniques we can use to be sure that we keep our prayer lives balanced so that it doesn't become so me-centered (my needs, my loved ones, my life). We can be schooled in everything from using a prayer journal to making a praise sandwich , but if we don't make prayer a priority, days and even weeks can go by without us sending a single "knee-mail" to the Lord.

So how do we learn to make the time to pray?

Well, for one thing, I think we need to be a little more realistic about it. We can't "make" time. God is the only one who can "make" time, and last I heard, He wasn't giving out any extra, not even for good behaviour! There's not one thing any of us can do to add even a single minute to our day, isn't that awful? No amount of good planning or multi-tasking or delegating can add one single second to our day.

So what's a virtuous woman to do?

She rises while it is yet night...

,,,her candle goeth not out by night

She looketh well to the ways of her household.

And lest you think I'm advocating burning the candle at both ends (I'm not), how about this one for a change "It is vain for you rise up early to sit up late...for so he gives his beloved sleep" (Psalms 127:2)

So, let's see--rise up early, stay up late; don't rise early or stay up late; sleep, don't sleep; make time or take time? It can be confusing can't it?

The truth is, we all have different lives. What works for me may not work for you.

When I was a young girl, learning to pray for the first time in my life, I prayed at bedtime. I turned off my light and knelt beside my bed and prayed for a little while. When I got a little older, I switched to mornings before school. That may not have worked if I'd shared a room, but by that time I did have a room of my own, so for me, it worked.

When I worked outside the home and had a little one, I prayed at night after my husband and son were already in bed.

I went through seasons when most of my private praying was done in my car--during my drive time to work in the mornings, and even sitting in my car during my lunch break.

We all go through busy, if not frenzied, periods in our lives, when we think to ourselves "Oh, if only I had more time..." and yes, we all know that we're all allotted the same number of minutes in day's time. What we really mean is "If only I had less to do to fill my time". Then we'd pray more. Or pray at all.

Right now, I'm a quiet season of my life. I'm not working outside the home. I don't have a little one anymore. We don't have family or friends nearby. I have a lot of time to myself, more time than I've had in years. And even so, I have to make a conscious effort to use that time wisely.

There are so many things, good things many of them, that can fill our days, but as virtuous women we must make prayer a priority.

Years ago, long before I was married myself, I heard a young bi-vocational preacher talking about drifting off to sleep at night after a shift at the plastics plant where he worked, with his kids sleeping in the next room, and hearing his wife praying in the living room.

That's the kind of wife and mother I want to be. I want my family to know the sound of my voice lifted in prayer.

I think about Susanna Wesley, mother of Charles and John Wesley, who gave birth to nineteen children, only 10 of which lived past infancy; who raised and educated her children almost singlehandedly in very trying and poverty-ridden circumstances; who nevertheless spent time each day in prayer, and whose now-famous "apron over the head" signal was sign to her children that mother needed time alone to pray and regroup.

Do you need apron time?

Until next time...