A side thought: There’s nothing like good health.

I keep making this horrible mistake of delaying prayers. It’s not that I do not want to pray. Neither do I see it as a difficult duty.  In reality, my time alone in quiet with God is a place I never want to leave for all eternity.

The problem is that my Nigerian cultural conditioning tends to feel that I can only have meaningful communication with God at a certain time and a certain place, singing a certain song to perfectly tune the mood and ambience to usher in heavenly presence. Without these rituals my prayers will not be heard.

I delay my prayers for this perfect setting so much that when I finally arrive at the designated day, time and place, I am gasping for air out of spiritual exhaustion. It always feels like I was holding my breath when oxygen is free of charge.

In Luke 11, when Jesus’ disciples wanted to know how to pray, he told them to begin with a simple word, “Father”. To someone who grew up under the Jewish culture, this might seem insultingly easy. A lot more stringent than the cultural practices of Nigerian Christians, Jews would have been familiar with certain protocols for prayer.

Perhaps Jesus should have started by giving guidelines on the clothes to wear when praying. He should have reminded them to wear a tallit (a prayer shawl), and then, he should have moved on to giving tips on how to choose a special sacred place to pray and what psalm to read before talking to the Almighty God. Yes, that would have made a lot more sense.

Yet, he simply says, “Father”, instantly telling us that when we pray, we are not talking to someone we need to pose for or prepare to meet. Just as a two-year-old boy depends on loving parents for everything and would always run to them for anything without a moment to pause and think and question why he is running, that is how we should go to God.

The two-year-old speaks and expresses himself as best as he can with his little words, not caring if he is completely covered in mud or even butt-naked. So we must speak simply and honestly with our father in heaven, dumping big and impressive grammar when we pray because “your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).

It is only natural for a child to want to talk to his/her father, even the ones that have failed in their duty of fatherhood. How much more should you simply reach out to the father who knows every detail about you, as he watched you being conceived and born and grow up to the beautiful creation you are today.

Prayer is us being our father’s children. We are just dialling his phone number and we never need to worry about running out of balance because the receiver pays – our father has carried the costs of our calls for all eternity through Jesus’ death on the cross.

…One of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’
He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: ‘“Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come…”’
Luke 11:1-2

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