Prayer: A Couple of Links

From Upward Call, a post on praying Hannah's prayer. To whet your appetite:

The other thing I like about Hannah's prayer is how she details the character of God throughout the passage (v.1-10). Some of the things we learn about God are:

1. He is holy (v1)
2. He is a rock (v.2)
3. He is the God of knowledge (v.3)
4. He shatters the bow of the mighty (v.4)
5. He feeds the hungry (v. 5)
6. He gives children to the barren (v.5)
7. He provides wealth (v. 7)
8. He brings low; He exalts (v.7)
9. The pillars of the earth are the Lord's
10. He contends with the wicked (v.9-10)

The fact that Hannah is a mother is never far from my mind, because the reason she is praying this prayer is that she has just brought to the temple the child for which she so earnestly prayed in the first chapter. I think about some of the prayers we pray as mothers: Lord, help this baby sleep; Lord, let me sleep; Lord, heal this child; Lord, keep this child from wandering away from You; Lord, will this child ever be potty trained? Being a parent ensures that we will never want for things to pray about, and there is always one child who keeps us on our knees more than the others. This prayer of Hannah's is a good prayer to add to the other more frequently uttered prayers, because this prayer will remind us, while we are in the very act of praying, of the character of the God to whom we are praying.

Go read the rest of Kim's post.

William Meisheid of Beyond the Rim shares a prayer he wrote for his daughter.

In the process of teaching Paul's Letter to the Philippians, which I have done five or six times, I have always challenged the group to write a prayer of their own to someone they love...

This year, when our men's group studied Philippians, not one member of the study had ever written a prayer before. In order to help them get started, I wrote an sample prayer using my daughter as the example.

You'll want to read the whole thing.

Don't forget to check out Violet's daily quotes on prayer as well.