PRAYER IS CONVERSATION WITH GOD MARCEL & STEPHANIE BORMANS
“Prayer is conversation with God”: this is my favourite description of prayer. Why? Because it is simple, both as a sentence and as a concept. Yet how difficult it can be – the difficulty not so much in finding particular words and formulas that suit us, but more so in the effort of making time for regular prayer.
M
y wife Steph and I have found that established prayer times are a simple way to foster prayer in our family, the habit starting from before our children were born all the way through until it was time for our children to take ownership for their own prayer lives. It is great when the prayer times we have established are mirrored in wholesome TV and movies, our children recognising that prayer was not just a Mum and Dad ordinance: “Look, it’s happening on screen as well.”
The easy prayer times to establish seemed to be prayer in the morning, prayer before bed, prayer before meals, and Sunday Mass. Led by us but with the encouraged input of our children, we’d have both of us praying together with them or we would take turns to pray with our children so that they would see the way Mum prayed and the way Dad prayed and recognise that while we may pray differently, it is okay and normal. We are sure that these early experiences of prayer are what will remain in the
