Prayer is the simplest means of communicating with God; it is eminently do-able (even children can pray) and totally essential, but so often there are stumbling-blocks and barriers to effective communication. We may feel we are too busy to pray; we may always procrastinate and put off prayer until later. Often, we are diffident and not confident about prayer, feeling that we don’t have the right words. Jesus reminded His disciples that there was no need for big words or endless repetition (Matt 6:7-8); God hears us when we pray.
Scrabble is a great game for building vocabulary, but Stephen remembers playing as a child and making up very interesting words which sadly were not real! In the TV series ‘George and Mildred’, George once played a solitary game of Scrabble, feeling pleased with himself for making the word ‘YACHT’, which unfortunately he spelt ‘YAHT’. When his wife asked where the C was, he said, ‘underneath the yacht!’ Prayer is not about finding complicated words, however; it’s about verbalising our feelings and making our requests known to God. This can be done in very simple language (our words can be few, as Eccl 5:2 says; the prophets of Baal may have used many words in 1 Kings 18:26, but their endless repetition didn’t get any response!)
It can be hard at times to express our thoughts and feelings verbally. Other forms of communication can be helpful (sign language is useful for those with hearing problems, for example), but God knows what we need anyway (Matt 6:30-32). We needn’t get in a flap about prayer; we just need to get on with it and ask Him to be involved in our lives.
