PRAYER is the desire of the human mind to reach the heavenly Father. Through hope, contrition, entreaty, supplication, and affirmation, it advances thought to reach the understanding which finds rest and peace in unity with God. The Lord's Prayer—the prayer which every Christian cherishes regardless of sect or denomination—provides different forms of prayerful approach to gain the ear of omniscience. Invocation, adoration, petition, repentance, and affirmation of law—all are included within its sacred words.
Prayer in its highest sense is more than a supplication. It is more than an entreaty or a rite of adoration. It is the law of God, the Father's will, asserting itself in individual consciousness, unveiling man's spiritual perfection as Love's beloved child. The very impulse to turn to God in prayer illustrates the incessant motion of divine law, uniting Mind and its expression in the infinite purposes of good. True prayer originates in God, not in self, and is inseparable from the one infinite Mind, the Principle of all that is true. Both prayer and answer, desire and fulfillment, evidence the presence and power of one all-inclusive God, good.
Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, says in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 10), "All that worketh good is some manifestation of God asserting and developing good." To pray with certainty of success, one must understand divine law, embody it in character, and obey it in action. In such prayer there is no agony of supplication, but the calm assurance of thought which submits itself to a power it never questions.
