“Make Plans and Provisions for good things to happen in your life.” Joe Moore

One of the good things I want more of in my life is answered prayer.The kind of prayer that sees sick people get well and lost people get found and that helps me set a course for my life. At least for that day.

I start every morning by “centering down” as the Quaker’s say. I also try to collect a few prayerful thoughts at bedtime, so I can “hem the day in prayer” as an old sampler suggests. (I’m not so good at that one. I tend to dream my prayers instead.)

Once a week, I go to the prayer room set up by our church and spend my assigned Hour of Prayer. But I don’t think of those times as my prayer life. Those are just my prayer times.

Brother Lawrence, a monk of the seventeenth century, wrote that he didn’t think times of prayer should be any different than times of action. We ought to be totally aware of God at all times.This was his plan for reaching that goal:

Every time the bells chime the hour, think of God. When you’ve managed that, add a thought on the half hour. Then every quarter of an hour and so on until you are thinking of God every waking minute of every single day.

I’ve never completely conquered that. But I’m still trying.

Ruth Graham, who reared their children and kept their home while her husband was busy evangelizing the world, said basically the same thing. Only she called it “praying on the hoof.”

Some of the greatest answers to my prayers have come in moments like that. Unexpected moments when I am suddenly, fully, aware of God.  So, this year, I’m determined to position myself for more of those good things. I’m making provision to hear more answers to prayer.

And, I am listening more intently for the bells to chime.