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There’s a long wooden table that’s been a home for my prayers for over 25 years now. It’s in our conference room at Guideposts and on Monday mornings a group of us in the New York office gather around it and read prayer requests sent in from the web and by mail.
We pick a few to read aloud, then we bow our heads and as best we can, we remember those needs and give thanks for the many answered prayers.
Later in the week that same teak-topped table is where we meet to hash out editorial content for the magazines or our websites. Business people come in and analyze our marketing strategy. Accounting will present a PowerPoint on how we’re measuring up to our goals. I suspect that the conversations that go around that table are no different than what you hear in many a New York skyscraper or American office. How are we doing? Are we making our numbers? Are we reaching out to new markets?
Except, except, except.
Every once in a while, if the conversation gets heated—and in any business there are stressful moments—I look around the table and remember how we’ve consecrated it every Monday morning. I’m reminded that God is in this place and listening and caring about us. It would be true in any workplace, in front of a computer, behind a tractor, at the wheel of a truck, in front of a kitchen sink or a conference room table.
Work and prayer. It’s a wonderful mix. Any way to remind ourselves that God is present where we are from nine to five (or eight to six), blessing us, understanding, listening, caring.
So tell me where do you pray?
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Rick Hamlin is the executive editor of Guideposts magazine. His regular prayer habit is a psalm a day and some meditation on his commute to work, which happens to be a New York subway train.
Your Comments
Where do I pray? just about any where I am. When I'm going somewhere in my car, I tend to get angry at drivers and the way they drive, but I try and turn the anger into a prayer for that person which helps me be calm. Then I begin to think of all the people who need my prayers,and I pray for them.
There is always the opportunity to pray because God is everywhere,in nature, my friends, neighbors, and the beauty around me.
Anne Y Williams
I pray where ever I am, as I try and remember to "pray without ceasing".
My main prayer area is in our den/spare bedroom. I have a small table with my reading materials, and journal along with a candle (love scented candles) and small "gidgi gadget" that belong to my brother in law, who we lost over two years ago, quite unexpectedly after finding him after 58 years of separation from my husband. It rotates on a little round, mirror topped base, looks like a mountain and changes colors. I read several books including, my Bible & Daily Guideposts, have quite time using my Anglican Rosary and journal.
I have become more attuned to God in the little things in my life, a break in traffic, a parking place, a beautiful sunset, a butterfly, the sound of a bird singing, may seem foolish to some but I believe God is with me wherever I am, if he want's to help great, I just say thank you God and go on. Many of my friends say he has more important things to do, no we are all his children and he is omnipotent so can do many things at once.
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