Mums' Prayer Meeting

Yesterday we had a "Mums' prayer" meet up. This is a once a month meet up in my living room where local Christian mums get together to pray for each other. I stole the idea from another friend about 18 months ago and set about telling local mums that it would be a time to meet up, chat and pray together. 

We quickly realised that calling it a prayer meeting was overstating it somewhat. Generally the first hour and a half is spent chatting and eating biscuits whilst entertaining our children, making sure they don't try and scale the stairs or destroy each other, then we spend a few minutes discussing what we would like prayer for. 

The actual praying bit comes at the end, when the children are all losing the plot and getting ready for lunch and nap time, and lasts no more than five minutes. Yesterday's prayer time took place to the accompaniment of two xylophones, a piano, and various musical toys; we all prayed with our eyes open to ensure that the children were okay, and most prayers were interspersed with the odd "shhh" here and there.

And yet, God was there; listening above the noise and helping us respond to Him and to each other in prayer. 

I have really struggled with the fact that most of my prayers to God nowadays are said whilst doing other things, or at least thinking about the next thing I need to do. It is something that I need to work on, to try and have some quiet time each day. But I have also come to realise that we do not need to pray in silence for our prayers to be real: we do not need to pray with our eyes closed for God to hear us.

Prayers do not even need to begin with 'Dear God' and end with 'Amen'. In the time we had chatting  yesterday before we even got around to praying, we had God in mind; we were preparing to pray throughout the coming month for the things going on in each others' lives; we were aware of God's promise that "where two or three come together in my name, I will be with them". (Matthew 18v20)

God is bigger than the clamour going on around us: He knows our thoughts, our actions, our lives. He does not need to 'hear' what we say because He can read what is on our hearts.