Yesterday I wrote about prayer that feels unheard. The kind that leaves us discouraged, wondering if anything is happening at all. I wrote about perseverance, about trust. If I’m honest, I was writing as much for myself as for anyone else.
Today I want to write about another problem I know all too well: praying when the words won’t come. It feels like my regular prayer times have been quiet lately. Not peaceful-quiet, but empty-quiet. The kind where you sit down to pray… and realise you don’t actually know what to say.
I think there are at least two versions of this. The first is what comes after yesterday. When we’ve been praying for something for so long that we’ve simply run out of words. There’s nothing new to add, nothing left to say. Just that ancient cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” Sometimes words fail because they’ve been used up.
The second is different. It’s when we come to pray and find… nothing. No energy, no clarity, no starting point. Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s being overwhelmed. Maybe it’s something deeper we can’t quite name. But the result is the same: we show up, and the words just aren’t there.
Maybe thats why prayer is a spiritual discipline ; it isn’t always easy. Sometimes it takes real intention just to keep turning up.
The Bible does speak, briefly, into this space. Paul writes in Romans that the Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans. Even when we can’t pray, somehow prayer is still happening.
But more often, Scripture doesn’t explain this experience so much as respond to it. It gives us words. When the disciples didn’t know how to pray, Jesus didn’t give them a technique or a strategy. He gave them a prayer.
Our Father…
I think that matters, because when I have no words, I borrow them. The Lord’s Prayer, yes. But also hymns. Taizé chants. Familiar phrases that have been prayed and sung for generations. Words that somehow reach deeper than I can manage on my own. Words that carry not just my prayer, but the prayers of countless others across time and place.
When I have nothing to say, I am not left alone in the silence. I am held by the prayers of the Church.
Sometimes, even that feels like too much. Sometimes prayer becomes something quieter still. No words, not even borrowed ones. Just presence.
Sitting. Breathing. Being. Letting God be at the forefront of my mind, without trying to fill the space.
Because I don’t think prayer was ever meant to be a performance of words.
Maybe, sometimes, it is simply companionship.
The Reason for my Hope Blog 