Time to Pray

As a kid, I wondered about the sign hanging on my wall: Prayer Changes Things. I understood that promise to mean my prayers would always produce results. Hopefully those results would be good. I assumed so. In fact, I thought it would make things the way I wanted them to be.
I prayed a lot.
After so many years of not getting what I want, I’m convinced that I should always pray for whatever God wants. Could that be a better deal? I think so. It has been for me.
I remember church members condemning those who ended their prayers with “if it be your will,” but maybe that’s not such a bad idea, after all. Isn’t that what Jesus prayed in the Garden?
When the Supreme Court outlawed school prayer in 1962, I thought we were headed for trouble, not immediately, but gradually. What would happen to future generations that no longer recited The Lord’s Prayer each morning before classes? Maybe this wouldn’t be a problem for my kids, but what about my grandkids and their kids? Could youngsters who didn’t know God become leaders of a nation that no longer considered itself Christian?
Maybe this is one reason I still pray a lot.
If we believe prayer changes things, we shouldn’t give up on the millennials, who are now our largest living generation, and Generation X that follows. I don’t mean to get hung up on generational stereotypes, because we all have unlimited potential if we hear and follow the Lord. What if people turn further away from the Lord? Either way, in doing all else we know to do, we dare not forget to pray.