Pray Without Ceasing - You're Doing It Anyway

People are often confounded by the notion of prayer but I think it's very natural and can be quite effortless. Have you ever held your breath waiting for news, hoping it was better than many feared? Wasn't that your body and subconscious saying together, though silently, "My heart is holding this situation in love and I am wishing for the best possible outcome"? And wasn't that a prayer?
Has your heart ever broke open, or even shattered (it seemed) as you considered the agony someone else was experiencing, and in response didn't your tears flow? Wasn't that your spirit touching theirs and offering the blessing of compassion, and wasn't that a prayer?
Have you ever said or even thought "good luck" while truly wishing someone a satisfying experience or a joyful outcome? Have you ever said, "be careful" to someone driving away or leaving for a trip, and was that expressed wish terribly different from asking saints or ancestors or angels to watch over your beloved traveler?
Prayer is part head and part heart,
part logic and part love,
part mechanics and part mystery,
part poetry and part principle,
part faith and part formula,
part humility and sometimes even part hubris,
part courage and part comfort offered by outrageous hope and a sense that life is meant to be good and a realization that we are all, somehow, connected to all that is and all that ever has been.
And in one way or another, don't we experience or engage in one or more of these "parts" almost every moment of our lives?
"Pray without ceasing" may not be so much an instruction as an observation that we are doing that anyway.
I bet you have prayed in the last hour or so. You may not have offered your prayer to a deity, you may not have ended the experience with an "amen," but you undoubtedly have felt hope or gratitude or love or compassion in the last hour, and I would call that prayer. See, it's not so difficult after all. 

--Bishop Durrell Watkins, D.Min.