A time to pray
Bible study and prayer time while I was in Morocco.
While I was in Marrakech, I heard the sound of chanting over a loudspeaker five times a day. To a visitor hearing it for the first time, it may sound like an alarm or siren, but for locals it’s a routine signal that it’s time to pray.
In Morocco, the Muslim call to prayer, or “adhan” in Arabic, occurs several times throughout the day and is recited by a muezzin at a nearby mosque. Speakers throughout the city ensure people can hear the announcement wherever they are.
As a Christian, I found this practice beautiful and humbling. People would stop what they were doing, however important, to pray for a few minutes. In Muslim culture, it is acceptable and expected to interrupt their everyday activities for their religion. Although I believe in a different God, I respected how they use this routine to remind themselves of the importance their faith has over everything else in the world.
Back in the States, we give very little room for this sort of interruption, especially in a city like New York. With so many to-dos, meetings, and conversations throughout the day, it’s difficult to remember to pray and easy to forget God’s presence. In American Christianity, prayer can easily become passive. “Pray how and when you want” is a good concept when encouraging people to personalize their prayer life, but sometimes a lack of direction can lead to very little practice.
Personally, I forget to pray all the time. If I don’t schedule time with God in the morning, I might go about my day without even a simple prayer of gratitude or worship. I often forget to pray over my meals, rushing to shove food into my mouth without acknowledging the One who provided it for me. And I can’t count the amount of times I tell someone I will pray for them, then fail to set time aside to really pray and intercede for them.
Seeing how another culture prays made me wonder how I could better prioritize my own prayer time. What would it be like if I set an alarm five times per day to remind me to pray? It would be disruptive. The alarm might go off while I’m on the train, or in the middle of a conversation, or working on a story. Would I be willing to stop what I’m doing to pray for five minutes? I might worry what people around me would think if I dropped everything to pray. It would certainly take some getting used to — and letting go of my ego — but maybe I could start with just once or twice a day.
All this is not to say that Christians should be so rigid we lose the passion and purpose behind our prayers. There is always room for spontaneity of the Holy Spirit and ultimately, God should lead each of us in our individual routines. I only know for myself that I could benefit from a little more habit forming in my spiritual practices.
