ready, set, pray!

so, one thing that has become abundantly clear to me in the two whole days that i’ve been here is that prayer takes on a very different role here than it did for me growing up. now, this may have to do with my family and the family i’m living with now more than with us culture or Slovak culture, but it is still really interesting. i have never been really into praying. i do know that prayer can be very powerful and meaningful, and i relate best to it when praying aloud as a group, but it has never quite been my thing.

as such, i have prayed more times since arriving here than i had for quite awhile before that. i think that i always prayed in my own way, but it was not really an explicit, “ok, now let me pray” it was more mentally thinking with god. here, we pray before eating (which i really like and was doing in chicago and bratislava as well, but not quite as in-depth) as well as in the morning with our devotional (a biblical reading and reflection then a prayer) and at night before bed, we pray together.

now, most of the time i have absolutely no idea what they are saying when they pray, though i do occasionally catch a word or two, or my name. this is fine though, because it lets me think about what they might be saying. when it's my turn (usually in a group of just a couple, everybody prays, while in a big group a few people are either chosen to pray or pray as they feel called. it seems that people are not nearly as fearful of praying as in the us), i have found that i do have a lot to pray for and about, as well as that i find relief and comfort in praying, even though the only group part is that everybody said something.

i used to think of group prayer as more meaningful (for me, at least) because the group could hear and understand what everybody had to say, but that is not the case here. yet, it is still (or perhaps more so) meaningful to pray in a group. i guess i can't quite articulate this change in how/why i am praying, but it is definitely more meaningful for me now than it has been in the past.