Pray Before You Fix

The disciples tried to fix the boy before they prayed. Jesus told them the order was wrong. Here is a practice that follows from it.

When a problem arrives this week, a child in tears, an email that lands badly, an appliance that dies, a conversation going sideways, pause for the length of one breath and pray a single sentence before you do anything else. It does not need to be eloquent. Lord, help me with this. Lord, I do not know what to do. Lord, give me patience.

The point is not that the sentence changes the problem, though it may. The point is that it changes the order. You are placing dependence before competence, which is the order the disciples forgot. Do it enough times and it becomes reflex, and reflexes are what carry us when we are too tired to decide.

Set a small trigger to remember it. Some people use the moment their phone lights up. Others use the walk from the car to the front door. Choose one, use it for seven days, and see what happens to the tone of the week.