The beauty of prayer

What's a prayer??

Have you ever prayed??

Have you ever wondered whether the way you pray is really praying??

"Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God". ~Diana Robinson.

We should pray everyday, yet most of us take it for granted...

We can talk with friends about something that is unimportant for hours, yet are 'lazy' to utilize 5-10 minutes of our 'busy schedule' to pray and meditate about something more important to us, which might be beneficial to us as well as to the world around us...

There is this quote that attracts me.

"Many people pray as if God were a big aspirin pill; they come only when they hurt." ~ B.Graham Dienert.

This quote may seem a bit outdated, because taking low dose aspirin everyday to prevent cardiovascular disease is getting increasingly common everywhere... So people are consuming aspirin prescribed by the doctor everyday, not when necessary...

BUT anyway, that's not my point.

My point is, most of us are last minute creatures...

When we are in deep sorrow and are stucked in the pitfalls of our lives, we start to look for help... we start to pray and ask for assistance from God...

There's this guy who told my mother that he and his family does not believe in God and prayers.

However, during a conversation, when we asked:

'What will you do when you are in great danger, and nobody is around to help you?'

Without much thinking, he replied:' Qiu2 Shen2 la...' (meaning ask help from God in mandarin)

Well, he does believe in God, just that his family members did not teach him to pray or talk about the Creator with him...

It's our nature to feel the presence of God, and have faith in everything we do...

We can't see God directly, just like the strong sun, but we can feel the warmth, see the effect of the sunlight and heat energy...

The plants all need the sun for photosynthesis, and the animals including us need to survive by eating the plants...

It's a cycle of growth~~~

"Blessed is he who remembereth his parents before himself..."

We should always remember and pray for our parents...

I really regretted not praying enough for my father...

I hope that my prayers for him now will help him to progress spiritually in the other world...

Praying for mum now is more important than for myself... She needs strength and love to continue her life in this world...

Prayers is the food for our soul.

We tend to eat all the delicious food for our physical body, but yet forget to feed our delicate soul...

It's easy to feed our souls...

Just spend some time each day, relax our minds, pray sincerely to God, pray for everyone, be determine on our decisions, trust in God, and all questions will be answered gradually...

There's another quote which I find confusing at first:

"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers." ~Oscar Wilde.

'Huh??'

That's my first response.

It actually means that sometimes what we wish for is not good for us. And if God is 'naughty', he will grant us the wish we made so that we will suffer, just like being punished.

So ya, if we don't get what we wish for, don't be sad... God is actually telling us that it is not the best thing for us.

"Meditate profoundly, that the secret of things unseen may be revealed unto you, that you may inhale the sweetness of a spiritual and imperishable fragrance..." ~ Baha'u'llah.

^v^