Making time to pray is incredibly important for Sneha Ninan, co-ordinator of youth, children and young families ministry at Emmanuel Church in Loughborough.
Like many right now, she is missing her usual routine of work and associated prayer.
Finding new ways to pray can be rejuvenating for our everyday faith and in recent weeks, Sneha has discovered a new pattern of prayer at home with her family. Here she explains how that occurred, and what impact it is having on them all.
“I missed our staff prayer meetings where we follow the morning prayer pattern from the Church of England website. So I introduced this to our family.
“Each week I put together the morning prayer liturgy. It starts with some of the opening prayers, we then go on to read one of the readings - either the Psalm, the Old Testament reading or the New Testament reading, depending on which one I think we could engage with - then discuss any thoughts or questions we have about the passage, pray for one another and the wider world and finish by saying the collect together.
“Although we prayed every day and regularly as a family before, it's been wonderful to have a better routine and structure for us.
“We have morning prayer at 8.30am and it marks the start of our day during the weekdays.
“Our evening prayer is at 7pm and we don't follow any liturgy for the evening on request of our 12 year old. Instead we do an informal reading from a teen devotional and finish in prayer.
“Having this daily rhythm has been wonderful for us. What has been particularly amazing for me is to see my children (9 and 12 years old) engaging with the Old Testament.
“The readings that we have been following have generated wonderful discussion, thoughts and comments. Who would have thought?
“Discussing it in the context of family has also opened Scripture to my husband and myself a lot more.”
How are you finding new ways to pray, either on your own or as a family, during lockdown?
#everydayprayer