PRAYER
Prayer is defined as words that one says to God giving thanks
or asking for help. In religion, there may be a fixed form of words that one
can say when one speaks to God.
All religions have a good number of prayers which are addressed
to God by individuals or groups of devotees.
True prayers should be offering of gratitude to God. Regrettably
enough it is not so in many cases. People seek some relief, benefit or favour
from God in their prayers and hope that He will grant it to them.
Some common synonyms of prayer are ----asking, beseeching,
imploring, entreating, supplicating, requesting and appealing.
Such prayers as praise God and offer Him thanks for giving us
worldly life with all its goods and chattels are the best. They should always be
there day and night, in both comfortable and uncomfortable circumstances.
To forget God in happy times and remember Him only in
unfortunate hours is utter selfishness and lacks sincere gratitude.
The English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) says: Many
things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of. What are men better than
sheep or goats, that nourish a blind life within the brain., if, knowing God,
they lift no hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them
friends !
According to The British clergy Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) :
When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for
it; the form of your prayer should be rule of your life; every petition to God
is a precept to man. Look not, therefore, upon your prayers as a method of good
and salvation only, but as a perpetual mention of duty. By what we require of
God we see what He requires of us.
Finally, this short but significant quote : Prayer is the
inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.
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G.R.Kanwal
16th December 2024
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