For most of my life religion was the end rather than a means to the end. Buddhists turn that idea upside down. If you ask the Dalai Lama what he is doing when he meditates, he will tell you he is practicing. I always thought that meditation was only for relieving stress or listening to God, but that is so far from the truth. Meditation is mainly about preparing and fine-tuning our emotional skills. I often use my meditation time to imagine how it would feel to have patience and compassion for someone in situation that is difficult for me to respond properly. Meditation is not done as some trendy new-age self-help. The Buddha says that we should practice so that we can heal the world and it should not be done for our own benefit. Meditation is the practice of our minds used to heal the world. I think that at the heart of Christian prayer is the idea of practicing compassion.

The concept of pleading with God to respond is somewhat silly if you think about it. I don’t expect God to jump through hoops and change his mind about how to run the world based on my prayers. However, by praying for a person in need I am practicing compassion and the next time I meet that person or another person in a similar condition I will be more compassionate because I’ve had that moment of practice. It is no coincidence that the most compassionate people I’ve ever meet are people that spend much time in prayer. I assumed it was because of their personality or their “gifting”, but I think I had it wrong. Those people don’t pray because they are compassionate. Instead they are compassionate because they spend time in prayer practicing the mindset of compassion.

I may still pray for a some desired future outcome, but by praying for a future outcome that needs to occur, I am practicing aligning my will with God's will and preparing my self for that outcome. What if we as Christians can learn to see prayer not as a means to get what we want but as a way to transform our wants? I think Jesus understood that and it is at the heart of his lesson to us about how to pray. The Lord’s Prayer is a great model for prayer as an act of molding our minds into the will of God.