Five Alive Mission members make a ‘river of prayer’ using coloured cards.

This last Sunday in church we prayed in a slightly different way to usual. We wrote or drew on coloured cards then stuck those cards to another card in the shape of a river (we were remembering Jesus being baptised in the River Jordan). Our ‘River of Prayer’.

Usually with prayer people expect lots of words, read by a vicar or by someone up at the front of church – words that often go on and on. And on.

Jesus, however, said that people shouldn’t babble prayers, filled with “meaningless repetition, hoping to be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6 v 7). There are as many ways to pray as there are people on the planet.

Silence. Words. Music. Art. Sight and sense. They are all ways of talking to and even listening to God. Ask your priest, or minister, or a Christian friend what ways help them to pray.