Last Thursday was National Day of Prayer, and I generally organize a prayer time out in our back parking lot. I pass out flyers for the lunch rooms and do a few emails to interested parties, and usually, the most devoted Christians will come. I compose a fairly detailed prayer, but I also ask everyone there if they would like me to add any special requests. This is usually where the real magic happens, and this year was no different.

As I opened it up to special requests, a lady who for some time has been kind of on the verge of exploring issues of her faith spoke up. She asked us to add a baby boy and explained that her daughter, who works as a nurse, has been attending to him for several months. This boy has had two major surgeries and many problems and lays on the verge between life and death, but lately, the nurses have taken to praying for the little guy. For the first time in months, he has started to improve. So, we added the baby boy and held in our hearts the wonder of God’s mysteries.

The other day, I was stopped by another of the girls who had attended the meeting. She works in our warehouse and is very young as I was reminded the day a while back that she told me she was born the year I graduated from High School! She comes from a family who have never believed in God, but she started to believe as a young girl in her middle school years after attending a local youth group. She told me that day how much she liked the way that I pray, and we started to talk about how personal prayer can be. She told me that she doesn’t pray very well, and sometimes she even catches herself with a swear word during a prayer. I laughed, and told her that I think I had learned a lot from listening to my dad pray as a young person.

I explained to her that they don’t really give lessons on how to pray. Maybe they should, I conjectured. Usually, everyone struggles through it the best way that they can, but it can be really difficult for many people. I talked about a lot of the things that I have learned about prayer from other people and through the weekly prayer group we held a few years ago. Then, I shared with her something that I recently read that was written by Henri Nouwen. He explained how to quiet yourself to prepare for God’s presence and I thought that was really helpful. We also talked about personal prayer verses public prayer. I told her that not everyone is comfortable praying in front of others because it is very personal to them, but that there was a benefit in praying out loud at times.

The whole discussion only took about fifteen minutes, but I was in awe how one move made by me to organize a National Day of Prayer meeting could wind up being so meaningful to others. I could have forgotten this year, but someone reminded me that it was coming up. One step forward on my part was all that was needed for God to make His beautiful magic.