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Make A Pray
Last year, to mark the beginning of summer, my wife took our two daughters to the Blue Bell creamery in Brenham. Upon seeing the Wonka-esque cornucopia of wonders, my youngest daughter, overcome with emotion, cried out, “We have to make a pray!”
We may smile at the innocence, but the phrase lingers because it reveals a truth far deeper than she knew: that wonder invites prayer. That awe, when properly received, becomes communion.
Too often, we treat prayer as a task — something to check off or perform at designated times. But what if prayer wasn’t simply something we do, but something we become? What if our very lives, steeped in wonder, could become “a pray?”
The Book of Common Prayer invites us into just such a life. It doesn’t aim to replace spontaneous prayer, but to root us in a rhythm that turns ordinary moments into sacred ones: morning and evening, meals and labor, grief and joy. The words passed down through centuries shape us not only to speak to God, but to live with Him. Its prayers — ancient, poetic and richly grounded in Scripture — train our eyes to see grace where we might otherwise miss it. They teach us to pause, to give thanks, to lift the world before God.
To live a life of prayer in wonder is to let ourselves be interrupted by beauty. It is to respond, like a child, with instinctive gratitude when we taste goodness — whether in a scoop of ice cream, a quiet sunrise or a moment of kindness. Wonder is not distraction; it is the doorway into deeper awareness of God's presence.
So may we learn from little voices that call out, “We have to make a pray!” — and may we, too, be overcome with such holy urgency. Let our lives be shaped by the rhythms of prayer, anchored in tradition and awakened by awe, until we ourselves become a living prayer of gratitude and joy.
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