I’ve recently taken it upon myself to try and understand religion a bit more, whether this was through pure boredom or the sheer force of my curiosity I do not know.
I followed a link that a friend sent me to a church style service on YouTube and noticed a few things while watching it. I think the channel was called Proclaimers Uk (just to be clear it’s not the fantastic Scottish twins
The thing I’ll discuss in this post is what I noticed about their community prayer section. They had members of the public who are likely followers of their church send in prayer requests and the guy with the microphone in the video reeled off all the things in series as he was talking to God.
This is when I realised what was happening. I’ve always thought praying was stupid, like having an imaginary friend but that’s the point isn’t it?
We all need someone that we can trust, someone that we can really talk to about the serious things like financial worries or simple things like the milk going off. Talking to God as a religious person sees would be special like talking to an imaginary friend would be to a child, it’s someone to trust and be open with. I sort of have my own version which is talking to myself which does fit with my belief system so it works for me.
Over the last two years – even before the lockdowns – there have been things on TV telling us to talk to each other more. We are losing that human connection, we need to learn how to be personal with one another again, to learn how to trust. There’s a lot about young people and their mental health which stems from the way they socialise over the phones or in groups so big that there’s very little connection between them.
The reason for prayer isn’t religious. The reason for prayer is born from a need for personal connection, a need to really trust and talk to, even if it’s something you can’t tell loved ones. To talk to God is to find a friend like a child with an imagination, if it doesn’t talk then you can tell it anything without fear being judged. Sometimes you will want a response but at least you’ll have had the chance to express yourself which will help more than you think.
Depending on your beliefs there may even be someone listening.
I use Christianity as a reference because it features the most in my culture so seems familiar to me, what I write applies to most religions.
Image credit to Pexels.com
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