How can we help young people to pray? We all know that sometimes when we pray distractions come and it’s hard to stay on track. At other times we just end up with ‘shopping list’ prayers.
Here are four simple ideas or guides which I’ve used with young people who have wanted to be more effective in their prayers.
The first two examples are acrostics. Acrostics have been devised throughout history from the ancient Greek and Latin writers, through renaissance poets and medieval monks, right up to modern times. An acrostic poem is where the first letter of the line in the poem works together to spell a word.
In these examples each letter of the four letter word, forms the initial letter of another word or phrase to guide the direction and focus of the prayer.
