The next few months of my life are going to be pretty busy. I have Christmas and then a few days in Montreal for the CCO Rise Up conference just around the corner. Come January I'm moving across the country, and will be busy with that. And! By the time I'm settled out there, a difficult crunch time at work will have started and I won't have very much time then.
So you can understand my desire to understand how to make time for prayer. I won't have a perfect answer on how to find time for prayer, I'm writing this as much for me as for my hypothetical audience.
A few times I've written about prayer, and it's importance and ended those, discussing what litte things I intend to do to grow in my faith. Honestly, I don't really practice what I preach. A year and a half ago, I talked about starting the Father Mike Schmitz Bible in a Year Podcast. Today I'm not even halfway through. In fact, between then and now, my Uncle started that same podcast and has likely finished it by now. All that to say, I'm not quite practicing what I preach.
What's a man to do who wants to pray, but also in some aspects doesn't want to pray? What I want to talk about is not how to pray, since I'm no expert in that, but more how to make time to pray.
My best idea, although I certaily haven't implemented this yet is to bundle it with an existing habit. For me, my most applicable habit started back in December 2023 at the CCO Rise Up conference. They called it the 2033 challenge or smiething like that. The idea being that if Jesus was 33 when he was crucified, then 2000 years since the crucifiction would translate to the year 2033. The challenge was to set a daily alarm on your phone for 20:33 -- 8:33pm, and make a small prayer. For two years, I've had my watch start beeping every day at 20:33. When that happens, I make an incredibly brief prayer along the lines of "Father let your kingdom come on earth as in heaven, come Holy Spirit." Some days--honestly many days--over these last two years, that may be the only praying I would do that day.
What I want to do is take that super simple "prayer one-liner", and use it as a catalyst for some more substantial or deeper prayer. As a catalyst to read the daily readings, listen to the bible in year podcast or maybe personally pray for the people in my life.
When life gets busy, prayer is prety much the easiest thing to fall by the wayside. That's not a good thing, but I guess it is a human thing.
I tried something different to get the first draft of this written. I recorded myself playing minecraft and getting my ideas out, Redeemed Zoomer style. It's difficult, and my ideas needed to be fleshed out above what I dictated. I experimented with whisper ai, so here's the transcript in case you're interesed: fountainbuild.txt