Prayer Help for starting 2009

Happy new year to all, and I pray for all of you that 2009 brings answers to your prayers, new opportunities for financial well being, fresh understanding and love in relationships, abundance enough for being generous with others less fortunate, insight into our human condition and world views. 

Prayer requests are going to be very important for all of us this new year, 2009. Requests for prayer help in every aspect of our lives will probably be greater this year than any other year in many decades. The whipsaw downturn in the economy, home valuation loss, loss of retirement savings, or college funds for our children, or whatever nest egg we were carefully nursing, has left many of us worried, angry, desperate, even depressed. Yet, these trials also bring us closer to God, to the angels who constantly seek to help us, and to all spiritual personages we turn to in hardship and loss times. 

These times when we are severely challenged in our every day lives and our future often become the times we become more pure in spirit, more concentrated in our prayer mindfulness, more attuned to God and the angels from moment to moment. 

For prayer requests to God or the archangels and angels (and our guardian angel) we seem to more quickly seriously adapt the early Christian teachings of being humble, meek, loving of everyone when we are stressed. We also, or should, turn to prayer as a natural expression of delight and gratitude when something of a good nature happens for us. It is a metaphysical and biological condition in our human brain that our sense of happiness and joy is tied to the surge of appreciation upwelling at times of deeper pleasure. Joy and thankfulness are intertwined in the neurochemistry of our mind and body response—and this really becomes one of the "many mansions" that the Bible refers to. If we could command that experience of deeper joy and its accompanying appreciation response at will, we would truly be more adjusted in life and closer to living a spiritualized life in full. 

Prayer requests in our darker times come so naturally to us, it is more than second nature. How often do we hear people think, whisper, or say, or cry out, "Oh, God?" It is probably among the most uttered entreaties among English-speakers every day—could be in the billions of times invoked each day. Oh, God is a prayer request, an invocation. We are invoking God to be aware with us of what we are going through and to help us in all ways. It is a prayer request invocation that is so simple, yet so effective. Calling upon God, or the angels, does help us in the mere fact that we are asking for help, or a superluminal presence that makes it feel like everything will be all right. In simple prayer requests (like Oh, God) we are assured and feel like our being has been turned from dark, corruptible iron to glittering incorruptible gold: from human to more divine. This prayer request imbues us with spirit force, and we are naturally a little more positive and hopeful. And being a little more positive and hopeful during today's catalog of crises is a very great thing. The power of positive thinking and hope is inestimable. It can lead to minor or major miracles for each of us. 

Traditionally, we conjure up our olden spirit of oath-taking and vows to make resolutions for ourselves. Usually, these take the form of our bodily health, but can include more intellectual or cultural pursuits we desire to braid into our upcoming year. Why not take a vow of making prayer and prayer meditation, or prayer appreciation a more cultivated part of our daily hours. Cultivate prayer. Cultivate prayerfulness  when there is great loss or the facing of all that is necessary to get a job, pay the mortgage, send the kids to college, put food on the table, pay an electric bill. Resolve to create a prayerful mind within yourself, positive and hopeful. Insight and strength always come the spiritual powers of optimism and hope.