Grace Mazza Urbanski is the Director of Children’s Ministry for the U.S. National Office of the Apostleship of Prayer, and she finds that noisy children can be a trigger to prayer. When praying the Spiritual Exercises in daily life, she imagined herself as a baby.
After all those weeks of praying as an infant in the arms of my loving Father, the cries of babies resonate somewhere deep within. Pavlov would be proud to observe my new instinct to pray upon hearing a baby noise. Happy coos and squeals are an invitation to prayer; relentless screaming and soulful cries remind me of my fitful neediness. Incense and bells may be more conventional, but a child’s voice is my new prayer trigger.
And what better laboratory than a packed church for testing this prayer stimulus? The louder the better, as far as I’m concerned. Children of the world, unite! Do you sense a moment of profound stillness? Pierce it! Can you detect a reverent pause? Tear it wide open, and bring us to tears as we confront our own infancy, our own awesome dependence on our heavenly Father.
Have you experienced an unconventional prayer trigger?