Jeanne of Knowledge Hungry talked about some habits she wanted to change in her life and one of them was prayer. Quoting her:

Prayer. I have a habit of praying, to be sure. I pray the Liturgy of the Hours daily (morning, evening and night prayer), and I pray the Rosary at least four days a week. I??d like to pray the Rosary every day. Some weeks I do, but others I slack off. I??d also like to improve my ??informal communication?? with God in spontaneous prayer.

Being Lutheran, I can’t exactly help her with the Rosary other than suggesting she maybe schedule times to pray it in a day planner. (That would, at least, be my strategy.) I can, however, talk about spontaneous or extemporaneous prayer. It’s something I’ve seen some of the #Cathsorority ladies talking about on Twitter and as one who seems to be doing that kind of prayer most of the time these days, I’ve got a few suggestions for those who want them.

Oh yes… I should also mention that I’m a huge fan of liturgical prayer like Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline (night prayer). Lutherans do have these in our hymnals. (Trust me… I’ve done all three.)

[+] The way I seem to be doing much my extemporaneous praying these days is going through my blogroll. Not all the sites are blogs (most aren’t) but I still hit a number of personal sites. I have Brett (my Reece’s Rainbow child) in it so I pray for him when I hit his donation page. Another way it will happen is going through my Google reader. I might happen to see that Anna is having problems so I’ll pray for whatever those problems are, whether they be emotional or issues with her leucine levels. (She has MSUD and is waiting for a liver transplant.) Her mom has a blog set up for the whole transplant process and it helps me to know how to pray for her and for Anna.

[+] If I know something is coming up, I might put it in a scheduler on my laptop so I can look at it and see who needs specific prayers that day. Example: Katie of NFP and Me will be taking her boards in a couple months and if she tells me the date(s) (hint hint hint), I can put it in my scheduler and make sure I pray for her that day. I do the same thing if someone tells me that they’ve got a really tough doctor’s appointment or if someone tells me that they have another thing in their life scheduled that needs prayer.

[+] Twitter is another way I do the above two. I read my tweets pretty fanatically and if someone expresses something that I think deserves my attention, I’ll say a short prayer about it. For those wanting some words, I usually say something like this when someone is sick or has a medical issue: “Lord, you are our Great Physician and the healer of our souls. Bless _____________ and restore them to good health. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

This is how I do it. How do you do it?