Five Ways To Find Time To Pray
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Five Ways To Find Time To Pray
Religious people, by their very nature, tend to find a lot to feel guilty about whether they deserve to feel guilty or not. When it comes to ‘the guilt list,’ very few things make us feel as bad as missing out on a prayer or two when we know we should have made time for it. Like not doing the dishes or forgetting to take the trash out, it’s just one of those things that happen sometimes. We mean to do it. We don’t skip prayers on purpose. It’s just that the busy nature of our modern lives sometimes steals time away from us, and before we’ve realized what’s happened, we’ve missed those few important minutes we spend taking time out to focus on our religion. This is bad enough if you don’t have a structure to your prayers, but for those who follow religions where prayers are mandated at specific times of the day, it’s even worse.
While it might be redundant for us to say this, the first thing we need to remember is to forgive ourselves and to accept that missing the occasional prayer isn’t the end of the world. It’s probably a symptom of not making enough time for ourselves in general, which is something that many of us struggle with and need to learn to get better at. Rather than focusing on that in this article, though, we’re going to focus on making time specifically to pray so that you can always find those few precious moments you need to have that important conversation.
Pray In Your Car
We spend a lot of time in our cars. Many of us drive to and from work every day and will continue to do so for our whole working lives. A lot of that time is wasted. According to statistics that were published toward the end of 2019, the average commuter loses more than two entire days out of each year stuck in traffic – so imagine how much time they spend in there in total! At the start and end of each journey, though, you’re in your car alone, and it’s parked. That’s the perfect time to spend a few moments in prayer before you get out and carry on with your day. It’s time that you were going to spend anyway, so you might as well make the most out of it. Doing this might even help you to feel more relaxed before you head off for what might be a trying day at work.
Pray During A Shower Or Bath
This is another example of making good use of the time that you would have spent anyway. Even if you don’t have a bath in your home or apartment, you have a shower, and you use it several times a week. Many of you will sing during your shower – something we occasionally do ourselves! Rather than entertaining the rest of your household or your neighbors with your singing voice, though, this is a good opportunity to catch up on missed prayers or even to plan your daily prayers for times when you’re in the bath or shower. God can hear you over the sound of running water, and it’s one of the few times in the day you can guarantee you won’t be interrupted.
Wake Up Ten Minutes Earlier
The majority of the time, prayers don’t have to be long or complicated – and when they do, we make sure that we make time for them. Those aren’t the prayers we tend to miss. Waking up ten minutes earlier won’t cause you any great hardship, and if you’re someone who tends to hit the ‘snooze’ button once or twice (or three times!), all you need to do is break that habit. You’ll be no less sleepy or tired if you get another ten minutes of sleep, and those ten minutes could be spent praying. The morning tends to be a good time to pray anyway as the house (and the world around it) tends to be at its quietest. Make yourself a cup of coffee or tea as a reward.
Pray During Your Lunch Break
No matter what you do for a living, you’re entitled to take a lunch break – and you’re also entitled to leave your desk or wherever it is your work during that lunch break. That means you shouldn’t have any difficulty finding somewhere quiet to spend a few moments in prayer. Ideally, there should be somewhere provided within your workplace, which is increasingly common in modern office spaces, but even if there isn’t, you ought to be able to find somewhere suitable nearby. Presuming your lunch break is an hour long, finding a few minutes of that time to have a few quiet words with your creator shouldn’t be an issue.
Remember It Isn’t A Competition
Many of us feel guilty about missing prayers that we didn’t necessarily need to make. Prayer isn’t a competition. It isn’t akin to online slots, where your chances of getting what you want theoretically improve the more times you spin the reels. Nor is the outcome of prayer as random as online slots, where you might get what you want from it one time but not the next even though you do everything the same way both times. While we don’t necessarily have any religious objections to the existence of UK slots website (a topic we’ve covered on this website before), you shouldn’t be looking to prayer as a chance to get what you want by putting additional effort into it. No matter when you choose to speak, God will hear you. If you’ve already prayed as much as you want or need to in a single day, you shouldn’t place obligations on yourself to pray any more if you don’t have to. So long as you don’t go days without praying, the odds are you won’t suffer for it.
You’ll never find extra time in the day if you don’t go looking for it, but once you do go looking for it, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to find it. Incorporate your prayers into a routine you already have, like commuting or bathing, and you’ll soon find you no longer feel like you’re missing out on them at all.
