"Words without Thoughts"

"For daily gifts both large and small,
For Jesus, greatest gift of all,
For mercies new at morning light,
We thank thee God with all our might."

For ten or fifteen years now, my wife and I have been saying aloud, in unison, this little prayer before we eat our breakfast.  We love it even though we know the "with all our might" of the last line is trite and could be improved upon.  In fact we did improve it once, but one or the other of us always forgot the improvement as we were saying it, so we just went back to the old "with all our might."

This morning I asked her, "Did you think of the meanings of the words as you said them?"  
She said she did.  
"Do you always?" I asked.
"Well, no, probably not.  How about you?"
"My mind was on staining the deck," I said.

I suppose any of us who speak a memorized prayer regularly would have to confess that sometimes we do not consciously realize or internalize or see in our minds the things we are praying.  All praying Christians pray The Lord's Prayer (Our Father, who art in heaven . . . .), and I daresay all have daydreamed through at least a petition or two.  We can get side-tracked by "daily bread" and pass right through "lead us not into temptation" without giving it a thought.

So, am I still praying when I say the words without consciously realizing them?  In Hamlet the wicked King Claudius, acknowledges, "My words fly up/ My thoughts remain below./  Words without thoughts, never to heaven go." 

I don't think I agree. King Claudius has the murder of Hamlet on his mind as he prays, and that, I think may have gotten in the way of God hearing his prayer.  But I believe that God hears my words and, whether I think about them or not, God knows if I mean them, believe them.  The ritual saying of a creed or a prayer is not just hollow ritual if spoken by someone who really wants God to "deliver him from evil."  

I hope that does not sound like an excuse for failing to mindful, for I do believe it is best to try to think the words of a prayer as we say them.



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