Tired Prayer

The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes  with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Romans 8:26-27

I don’t need a calendar to know it is mid-semester. Signs of sleep deprivation are all around. Bleary- eyed students mutter about papers and projects due and exams that are a large percentage of a grade. They are tired, in some cases exhausted – a word that literally means “drained.”

With weary brains and bodies, we may unable to form words for prayer. But we can pray by resting in God, by offering our tiredness and our inability to voice even our own needs, much less those of others. We can simply let ourselves be still in God’s presence.

Scripture promises that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weariness. When we are too exhausted to find words, the Spirit connects our trusting hearts to God and our prayer is perfected.

We may even fall asleep in the process, resting peacefully before God and letting God restore us.

God’s peace,

Katie