pre-packaged prayer for the weary heart

Hannah Vasby-Burnie shares how praying Scripture helps when we are pressed for time or do not know what to say to God

I don’t need to tell you that Christians believe that prayer is important. We pray in church and home groups, and we casually say ‘I’ll pray for you’ when someone is having a hard day. And we see posts on Instagram of people with beautifully decorated prayer journals and strict ‘quiet time’ schedules where the world seems to pause around them and allows them to spend a good half an hour in reverent communication with our heavenly Father.

However, as a third-year nursing student who’s soon to be entering the professional world, a lot of this type of prayer life can be unrealistic. I may have to miss church or home group due to shifts, missing out on experiencing precious communal prayer. If I’m honest, I don’t always have time in the morning before a 13-hour shift to carefully highlight my favourite verses and weave them into a 30-minute prayer time. When confronted with extreme pain and suffering on a ward that seems never-ending, my mind often draws a blank at the right words to pray in the moment.

And that’s the main issue. When you’re busy and tired, working long hours and being amongst non-Christians and people who are in their darkest moments, prayer does not always come naturally. My foggy brain can only focus on the job at hand and can barely manage a quick arrow prayer of ‘Dear God, please let me get this job done quickly so I can go on my lunch break’, let alone setting aside time to really communicate and connect with the Lord of Lords. Not that there’s anything wrong with arrow prayers, God loves even the smallest of voices, but when trying to develop and maintain a deep prayer life, we might want something meatier than what our stubborn, tired hearts can give us.

Prayer is beautiful when it is spontaneous and soulful, but Jesus knows that we don’t always have the strength to pray from our sinful hearts. Wonderfully, he has given us pre-packaged prayers in the Bible that we can use and are filled with life-giving truth. These are like handy saline syringes filled with the salty water of deep biblical truths – just rip open the packaging, pop it in the cannula, and you’re good to go!

The most famous of these prayers is the Lord’s Prayer, but there are many prayers in the Bible we can use, especially in the Psalms. Here we have 150 songs and prayers that, according to church leader and reformer John Calvin, are ‘an anatomy of all the parts of the soul’. The Spirit has also inspired Christians throughout history to write down prayers for everyone to use when we don’t know what else to say.

Christians have always experienced joy and worry, tiredness and pain, and Christ has too. Instead of having to look inside ourselves and kick our anxious, caffeinated hearts into gear, we can receive the gift of words from outside ourselves to set our hearts on our Father and give him our praises and petitions.

To help you on your pre-packaged prayer journey, here’s an example of when I used Psalm 134 on a night shift:

Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who minister by night in the house of the Lord.

Even on night shift I, a servant of the Most High, am called to praise him!

Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord.

Alone in the break room, I lift up my hands to praise you, Lord!

May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who is the Maker of heaven and earth.

I give thanks to the Maker of heaven and earth who blesses me even in the darkness of night, Amen.

Hannah Vasby-Burnie is a student nurse and serves as a rep on the CMF National Student Council.