When you read today’s headlines, you can either wring your hands in worry or fold them in prayer. Worry doesn’t help, but prayer is effective and powerful. Prayer is our greatest need, our highest activity, our finest habit, and our holiest use of time. Prayer changes things.

How, then, do we pray? Sometimes we pray like Hannah, moving our lips and praying silently. Sometimes we kneel like Daniel, who bowed his knees three times a day. Sometimes we sigh like Jesus in Mark 7:34, or we offer prayers as long as Solomon’s at the dedication of the temple in 2 Chronicles.

The Bible tells us to pray “… with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Ephesians 6:18, NIV). This includes written prayers, since there are so many of them in Scripture. Most of the Psalms are transcribed prayers. In the Gospels, the Lord’s Prayer is the most famous written prayer in history; and Paul’s letters are full of prayers penned for his churches.

Christians of all eras have written out prayers. Bishop Cyprian composed this prayer aimed at those persecuting the Church: “We pray and we entreat God, whom these men do not cease to provoke and exasperate, that they may soften their hearts, that they may return to health of mind when this madness has been put aside, that their hearts, filled with the darkness of sin, may recognize the light of repentance ….” Many of the great hymns of the faith are prayers we read aloud through the medium of singing. The Puritans, too, were famous for their written prayers.

Uniting around prayer is a way of putting the Lord’s people all on the same page. God attentively listens when we agree in prayer (Matthew 18:19), and there is power in thousands of people offering prayer with oneness of spirit.

This prayer for wisdom will encourage you to pray anew for the wisdom you need to stay sane and stable in times like these. 

In these hand-wringing days, let’s fold our hands, bow our knees, compose our minds, and change our world together— through prayer!