Prayer For All People

“Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6:10

I was praying this morning, and suddenly felt overwhelmed by all the prayer needs. I have friends with COVID. Friends with cancer. Friends with spouses or parents or children with cancer, and all sorts of other illnesses and disabilities. Friends with financial needs, relationship needs, elderly parents, or prodigal children. Looming large are questions that beg answers, problems without human solutions, misunderstandings and irritations that need grace, blunders that need forgiveness.

I can’t pray for it all, of course. I do what I can, but it always feels like a drop in an ocean of necessities, wants, desires, dreams, fears, requirements, emergencies, and lack. It just doesn’t seem like enough.

I imagine the prayers of those in other nations and cultures looks very different than my prayers. I think often of the little boy we sponsor in Tanzania. What do his parents pray about? They have no material goods such as I have. They have a mud hut with grasses for a roof, a dirt floor, a couple of pots and pans, and a whole lot of family living together.

What do the richest of the rich pray about? What do dying people pray about? What do business owners, and doctors, and gardeners, and musicians pray about? What do other religions and beliefs pray to their gods?

This is why I find the model prayer—that which we call the Lord’s Prayer—so comforting. It is universal, a useful template for all people, for all reasons, in all nations. Of course, those who pray it mindlessly run the danger of not praying at all, but merely reciting. His Word makes clear that this is not pleasing to Him. “And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do…” (Matthew 6:7).

When we use this template for perfect prayer, we praise God for Who He is. We acknowledge His ability and willingness to do what is needed. We don’t tell Him what that might be—we let Him decide. We acknowledge that He gives what we need each day. We ask His forgiveness for our sins, while reminding ourselves that we must do the same for others. We ask for deliverance from that evil destroyer of life and love and joy. And in the end, we are content with knowing that we, and everything around us and beyond us, belongs to Him forever, and He has the power to do something about what’s wrong.

This prayer fits everybody, and everybody’s needs. This is the bottom line for us all. We bring our specifics before Him—those things that touch our lives, those things that we have been asked to pray about, those things that need His mighty outstretched hand to change.

“The effective prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16).

Lord, hear our prayers. In our praying, we keep in mind that You know what is best, and it is Your intention to do more than we could ask or think. Amen.