Always Asking
I have often wondered why some people seem to slip so naturally into prayer, as if it were the most effortless thing in the world. Eric Liddell, it is said, prayed an hour a day without fail. My wife is much the same, steady, and devoted, quietly faithful. She moves toward prayer as naturally as breath. I admire it, and yet when I try to follow the same path, I find myself stumbling. My thoughts scatter, and I come away wondering why something so simple can feel so hard to sustain.
What I return to repeatedly is the act of asking. Perhaps because I need it so often. Perhaps because asking is woven into the human condition, into my condition. I think of the psalmists, especially David, bold in request, unashamed in petition, sometimes desperate, sometimes confident, always honest before God. There is comfort in knowing that even a king cried out for help. There is a kind of fellowship in those ancient words.
Yet not all the psalms are pleas. Some are nothing but praise, pure and overflowing with wonder. They leave no room for petitions because the psalmist has been caught up in something larger than need. C. S. Lewis once wrote that “praise is inner health made audible.” That has stayed with me, because it suggests that praise is not forced speech but a rising up from within, something the soul naturally does when it sees clearly.
Last night, on the west coast of Scotland, I saw a sunset that felt like a calling. The sky burned softly, gold fading into rose, then into the deep blue of coming night. To the left hung a crisp crescent moon, sharp and delicate against the dimming horizon. In that moment, it felt like an invitation.
People who witness a solar eclipses or the Northern Lights often describe the same thing, a feeling they cannot explain. A hush. A tremor of awe. A sense that something immense has brushed close. This is God whispering what creation has always whispered: Come and praise me.
“Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised,” says the psalmist in Psalm 145:3. I have read those words many times, but sometimes it takes a moment of beauty to understand them. Perhaps praise begins not with discipline but with noticing, with letting the world open our eyes. Praise is not something I must manufacture but something I can allow.
I still struggle. Prayer does not come easily to me. But I am learning to watch more closely, to listen for the invitations stitched into the quiet and the colour of the world. Always asking, yes, and occasionally touched by praise that rises like light on the horizon, the single flame that steadies the rest of the day.
Image by Copilot
