Praying for Strangers

It is a measure of growth.
The number of people I pray for in a day.

Once, there was just me. It was all I could handle,
prayers for my own brokeness.

A plea. A cry for help. What the bible calls
a groaning of prayer. Wordless and bone-felt.

But life runs in cycles. We survive. We begin
to live. Even broken, we begin to live

and see outside our windows. And you find yourself
praying, fueled by your own pain and need and understanding, you pray

for the strangers.
For the woman you love.
For your scattered children.
For the hungry, be it stomachs or souls.
For friends, near and far in space and time.
For the stranger across the diner, obviously sad.
For the stranger who just cussed you out
for a minor infraction. For the mistaken.
For the assumers. The greedy.
For those for whom power is used for hate.
For the hated. Whether deserved or not.
For those who have asked for prayers
and those who have thought about it
but never had the courage or faith to ask.
For those who feel unworthy.
Especially them.

Every day, you begin your prayers
thinking it will just take a moment, and
every day
you are wrong.

About this poem

I used to wonder about Paul’s admonishment to pray always. But as our world grows darker and angrier, I begin to get it.

Tom