Keeping our minds on God

When we say our prayers, it is very important that we should keep our minds on God and not just recite a form of words.  Some of you may remember the king in Hamlet, the play by Shakespeare.  The king has been trying to pray to ask God to forgive him.  At last he gets up from his knees and says,

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go”
(Act 4, Scene iii)

So we cannot pray properly if we are thinking about something else.  This means that as soon as we realise that our thoughts are wandering, we must bring them back at once and fix our minds on our prayers again.

The importance of silence

But prayer is more than just speaking to God: it is the lifting up of the whole mind to God.  And so we can also pray without any words at all, that is, by emptying our minds of all thoughts and just being with God in silence.  When we find our minds wandering we can bring them back to God by saying a short prayer, such as “My God, I love you” or simply “Jesus”.