Get the appUnlearning PrayerSample
THE POVERTY OF WORDS
KEY VERSE
"Let your words be few." Ecclesiastes 5:2
We pray as if God is a judge being moved by our rhetoric. We dress our prayers in good vocabulary and theological language, and somewhere beneath it all we half-believe the quality of our words determines the quality of the response. They don’t. God already knows what you need. Your words are for your focus, not his education.
The Desert tradition favoured what it called ‘arrow prayers’ — one-word or one-sentence prayers, short enough to fire and forget, repeated throughout the day. Not because brevity is more holy. But because fewer words require more trust.
THE PRACTICE
Identify one arrow prayer — a phrase of no more than seven words that rises naturally from where you are right now. Practise using it while driving, washing dishes, walking.
When you catch yourself reaching for more words, return to this one phrase instead.
An example of an arrow prayer: "Lord, have mercy on me."
Scripture
About this Plan
Prayer is strange territory. Some of us arrive here with decades of practice and still aren’t sure we’re doing it right. Some of us arrive carrying a long silence; years where prayer felt hollow, or pointless, or just absent. And some of us arrive simply curious. Drawing on the gritty wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers and on the profound theological insight of Rowan Williams, these six devotions are about one thing: experimenting. Letting go of the habits, expectations, and performance anxieties and embracing some new ways and allowing space for a new openness to God to grow.
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We would like to thank Ashburton Baptist Church for providing this plan. For more information, please visit: https://www.ashburtonbaptist.org.au/
