How Prayer is Meant to Warm You Twice

Do you have a tradition for welcoming the New year? One of ours includes praying with others for God's blessing on the upcoming year. I have discovered this tradition warms me twice.

Find out how:

The twice warming.

I think of this phrase when I hold a hot beverage on a cold morning. The hot liquid first heats my chilly hands, followed by my entire insides, as I sip the contents of a steaming mug.

I could have used a bit of the twice warming last year when my husband Kevin and I headed out before dawn to pray on the first day of the New Year on top of a mountain with a group of friends. We have participated in this tradition for more years than I can remember. Depending on the fitness level of the group, we have scaled the boulder-strewn stretches of Camelback Mountain to hear a bagpipe player at the summit or strolled up a tiny bump of a hill at Veteran’s Oasis Park.

With several octogenarians in the group last year, we bundled in jackets, hats, and gloves, as we faced the east on top of a small rise we declared to be our mountain. We whispered our petitions, the breath of our prayers visible in the frosty morning.

Prayers for God’s blessing. For provision. For healing.

I stood next to a woman who had stormed the gates of heaven for eight decades and near a young family with two elementary students, the boys stomping their feet on the solid ground. I scrunched my mittened hands deeper into the pockets of my jacket and tucked my chin under my wool scarf, but still shivered as the first sunrise of the year peeked over the horizon.

After one final prayer, we headed to a local restaurant, piling our coats on one of the chairs around the table.

“Can you bring us hot cocoa right away?” we asked our waitress. “Before you bring the food?”

“Absolutely.”

I cupped the warm beverage in my hands, warming my fingers. I stirred in the melted whip cream before cautiously raising the brown mug to my lips. The tiny sip of steaming chocolate rolled past my tongue and down into all my chilly insides.

I glanced around the table. Others had followed suit. First the cold fingers. Then the cold insides. The twice warming.

Hot beverages were not the only warming experienced that day, because prayer can also be a double warming. Prayer is not always meant to be spoken alone with God as the only listener.

“Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am among them,” Jesus promised in Matthew 18:20. As we speak our requests in community, we are first warmed in prayer as we step closer in relationship to others. Secondly, we are warmed as we raise our petitions and recognize our God who hears us.

Prayer can be a twice warming.

This post first appeared in the debut edition of  the Chandler Arizonan.