The One to Whom We Pray

“I have read many books on prayer, studied prayer and attended seminars on prayer. I have prayed tens of thousands of hours privately, and met weekly with beloved friends over years and years to pray. 

I have attended church prayer meetings, prayed at church railings, at community prayer meetings and while watching or listening to tragedies on the nightly news. 

I have prayed with thousands of people in large groups and hundreds of individual friends and strangers in intimate settings and casual conversations; face-to-face, over the telephone, in restaurants, in malls, in parking lots, in prisons, in foreign countries, on planes and through letters and e-mail. 

I have prayed walking, standing, sitting, rocking babies, kneeling and lying on my face. 

I have journaled prayer, spoken prayer, conversed in prayer, sung prayer, shouted prayer, whispered prayer, groaned prayer and wept prayer. 

In all of this prayer over so many years I have learned one thing. One single thing . . . and this is that the power of prayer is not in the words I pray, the place I pray, the way I pray, how loud I pray or how long I pray, but in the One to Whom I pray.” ~Anne Murchison