World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Faith Reflection | Hope-2025 | Jubilee of Hope | power of prayer
Christian hope, to me, means placing all my trust for my future in God’s promises, even when my answered prayers come with a side of thorns. I learned this the hard way one summer afternoon in a friend’s backyard, chasing a birdie with all the enthusiasm of an Olympic athlete—minus the grace. My foot slipped, and I crashed spectacularly into her mother’s prized rosebush. While my friend stifled laughter, I looked toward heaven with a sigh and a sarcastic, “Seriously, God?” Five days before, I began a prayer to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux for three special intentions. Three things I thought at the age of fifteen would make my life complete: a boyfriend, a job, and a car. The holy trifecta of early adulthood. It all started a few weeks earlier. During a conversation with my mother, I was lamenting my lack of all three. Her advice was surprisingly simple: “Why don’t you pray for them? It couldn’t hurt.” This was coming from a woman I had never seen pray. We were, at best, Christmas-and-Easter Catholics. My memory of prayer with my family when I was growing up was an occasional, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” or a Rosary during thunderstorms. But desperate times call for divine interventions, so I decided to try.
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