Teach us to pray: 2

Ready to pray?

Starting where we are

"I have calmed and quieted my soul,
   like a weaned child with its mother;
   my soul is like the weaned child that is with me." Psalm 131:2

Our attitudes to prayer are often shaped early in life. We may have grown up in a family that prayed, or gone to church or Sunday school and learned to pray there. We may just recall prayer as something tacked onto the end of a school assembly.
We may have tried meditation as part of a self-help or relaxation programme, which may not have had a Christian basis, or have found ourselves turning to prayer in times of crisis, lighting a candle as a wordless appeal to God.

• Think back through your life. When, where and from whom did you learn to pray?
• How has your prayer life changed since then, if it has?
• What do you feel about prayer now - is it something you want to do, and feel positive about or does it feel like a chore, something you feel you ought to do?
• Think about the verse from the Psalm above. When you begin to pray, do you feel like this?