by Dillon Mercado
I pray for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes I pray because I’m nervous, other times I pray because I’m happy and want to thank God, and sometimes I just pray because I have the time to. I pray at temple, home, and other times at school. But anytime I pray, I feel the same way each and every time. I feel like I’m talking to God. Even though God doesn’t respond, I know that God is listening. If I’m happy and want to thank God, then I know that God will accept the thank you. If I’m nervous or worried about a test, I know that Adonai will comfort me and make me feel better about it, so I can do well on it.
When I pray to God, I feel that I have complete trust in God. I trust that Adonai will help me with whatever problem I am dealing with. I also trust God to help me in the future by giving me a general blessing. I trust that the blessing will help me with anything I actively try to do, like running or studying. The blessing would make it so that I would pray less to God about completely fixing a problem, and pray more often about how I was able to solve the problem with God’s help. I believe that this is what God does when we pray to God. If we always pray to Adonai and say that we need a problem to be solved, then we will never learn how to solve the problem. If Adonai blesses us as we bless Adonai, then we can solve the problem with the help of ourselves and Adonai. We learn how to solve the problem and future problems become easier to deal with and work out.
To me, this is what God does when we pray. God knows that a one-time miracle probably won’t help us in the long haul, so God gives us the strength and courage to fix our problems, learn from our mistakes, and then solve future problems by ourselves.