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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Every family has one, a child who is simply, inexplicably, unreasonably good. Not perfect, but just genuinely, radiantly good. They do their chores without being asked. They share their stuff without being told. They comfort a crying sibling while everyone else is still arguing about whose fault it is. And the baffling thing is, nobody taught them to be this way. They just are. And even the parents look at them sometimes and think: where exactly did you come from? And if the early Church was a family, that child was Stephen.
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There is something special about conversations at night. During the day, everything runs on script. "How are you?" "I'm good." We speak about weather. Meetings happen, decisions are made, calendars are obeyed. Even in families, conversation is often logistics management, who picks up whom, what's for dinner, what's next. Its efficient, and necessary. But night changes things. A couple can spend an entire day discussing bills, groceries, and whose turn it is to call the plumber and to pick up kids, and then at 10:30 pm, lights off, room quiet, one of them says, "Can I ask you something?" You know immediately: this is not about the plumber. The real conversation has finally begun. Something carried all day has found its way out. Or college students, confident in seminars, composed in lectures, lying on a dorm room floor at midnight, staring at the ceiling, suddenly asking, "Do you ever feel like you have absolutely no idea what you're doing?" That question never surfaces at 10 a.m. But at night, it arrives uninvited and entirely welcome.
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Brief and contemporary inspiration focused on hope and family prayer will be delivered to your inbox! Articles include live video, written word, and links to resources that will lead you and your family deeper into faith.
I came across a stand-up comedy bit recently. The comedian says, “You ever notice, after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, you never see them hanging out again?” Think about that for a moment. Lazarus had a bad day. Not a flat tire. Not a bad meeting. He died. That’s already a terrible day. Day one: “Okay this is new.” Day two: “I am Still dead. Not improving.” Day three: “Alright, I think this is permanent.” Day four: “You know what? I’ve accepted it. I’ve processed it. I’ve let go. I’ve moved on.” He’s finally at peace. Maybe he’s thinking, “This is actually not bad. No bills, no responsibilities, no family WhatsApp groups.” Everything is calm.
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A few years ago, a friend of mine, an Assistant HR director in an IT firm, very respected, very composed, sent an email meant for one person, to everyone in the office. And not a short email. This was one of those long, late-night, brutally honest, carefully worded, emotionally charged emails. It began politely: “I think we need to address a few concerns” And then slowly, very professionally, it turned into a detailed analysis of one colleague’s failures, missed deadlines, half-finished work, and a pattern of inconsistency. Very professional. Very precise. The kind of email you feel good writing, and regret deeply sending. Anyway, he hit send after he had finished writing and for a few seconds everything was normal and peaceful. Then someone replied to that email, that’s when he noticed that the mail had been sent to all in the office. At that moment, you know it. The stomach drops. Time stops. You seriously consider moving to another continent.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
Anyone who has ever tried to start exercising again after months or years of neglect knows this. The first day you say, “Tomorrow I will start.” Tomorrow comes, and suddenly your body invents fifty reasons why today is not the day. The strange thing is that the longer we stay stuck, the more normal the ‘stuckness’ begins to feel. There is a man lying near the pool in Jerusalem. Thirty-eight years. Just think about that. Some of you here have not been alive that long. Thirty-eight years. That's longer than most marriages. Longer than most careers. Imagine you've been sick for thirty-eight years. Not with a cold. Not with a bad back, not even a fractured hand. And every single day, you drag yourself to a pool and you wait. And wait. And wait some more. Thirty-eight years is long enough for a person’s entire identity to become wrapped around a single sentence: “This is just how my life is.”
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
Imagine, for a moment, that you are the royal official in Cana. You aren’t just a character in a story; you are a man whose world is collapsing. Your son is dying. You have likely spent a fortune on the best doctors the Roman world could offer, yet here you are, desperate enough to chase a rumor about a carpenter-turned-healer. The royal official in John’s Gospel was, by any measure, a powerful man. He had rank. He had influence. His name opened doors. Yet none of it could save his son. So he walked. Uphill. In the Galilean heat. From Capernaum to Cana, roughly twenty to twenty-five miles. In our world, that’s a short drive with a good playlist. But in the ancient world, it meant eight or ten hours of dust, heat, and anxious silence.
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