Having Time For Prayer

Updated: July 16, 2023

“Tomorrow I plan to work, work, from early until late. In fact I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” 
– Martin Luther

 I love this quote from Martin Luther.  It emphasizes the importance of spending some time in prayer no matter how busy we are.

I have been very busy lately that my prayer time has been affected.  I usually do it at night before I go to bed but lately, I feel that I am not entirely focused on Him during these quiet/prayer times and worse, the time I spend in prayer which is normally about an hour each day has been reduced initially to 45 minutes, then to 40 minutes, 35 minutes and last night, to 30 minutes!

This morning, I remembered the above quote from Martin Luther and I realized I’m allowing my earthly pursuits to gradually take over the most important aspect of my existence which is my relationship with God.  And it saddened me. And I resolve not to let this happen again.

Then I had this urge to take out my calculator to see how much time people normally spend in prayer or in some sort of communion with God and I came out with this. Let’s say for a week:

  • Total hours in week – 168 hours (24×7)
  • Time spent working (on a job or studying)  – 40 hours (assuming we work 8 hours daily from Monday-Friday so 8×5)
  • Time spent sleeping – 56 hours (assuming we sleep for 8 hours each day so 8×7)
  • Time spent cooking/eating – 14 hours (2×7)
  • Time Left (to do as you please) – 58 hours (168-40-56-14) on the average, as some people sleep and work more or less than 8 hours in a day

Assuming we have 58 hours in a week to do as we please and we spend 2 hours in total in prayer (1 hour for Sunday Mass and perhaps another hour during other days of the week, that is if we remember Him at all during the week and pray), we spend only 3.44% (2/58 * 100) of our “free time” with/for our Creator, from whom all that we have come from – our life, our jobs, our material possessions, everything! 

How sad is that…God must be shaking His head. He must be saying ‘My children have hardly time for me yet I love them always and I am here for them always’.

Many of us lose this perspective when it comes to having time for and with God. How many times have we said that we’re so busy, we have no time for this, we have no time for that.  We have no time to go to church, we have no time to serve Him, we’re busy, just sooooo busy. Many of us have no time to spare for God, even just a teenie weenie percent of our free time each week.

How sad is that…:(

In this day and age, with so many distractions we encounter everyday, it can be hard to devote time to prayer or just simply a quiet time with God.

I guess God values the time we spend with Him, no matter how short it is, as they say it’s quality time and not quantity. But then, how do we spend it with Him? Is it just a ‘God, please give me this, give me that’ time? Or is it a time devoted to praising, to giving thanks, to confessing and not just for asking?

 

 
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