Wednesday January 24^th 2024

Sometimes we find it necessary to create words that have not previously existed. Often this happens with slang terms or medical terms that come into common usage. Back in the 1990s I was part of a group trying to add a profession to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and at that time it was required to find the word in print in such places as a newspaper to support the request.

Today’s word is such a word: PRAYCATION.

I hadn’t heard this word before our senior minister Daniel Hetherington used it. The rest of the day I kept pondering that word.

So what is a praycation?

We know that a vacation is a time away from the usual tasks and schedule of our lives. We have come to refer to a staycation as a vacation spent at home, rather than going to the beach or the mountains or on a cruise.

A praycation then would be a time taken away from our usual tasks and schedule and spent in prayer.

In Mark 1:35 we read “Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.” Jesus intentionally went to a place away from the tasks and schedule, the demands and the people, and spent time in prayer.

In Luke 6:12 we find “One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night.” So, He not only got up in the morning to pray, sometimes He dedicated an entire night to praying!

And of course, the Mount of Olives finds Jesus stepping away from even His closest followers to pray alone. “He walked away, about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed,” we are told, leaving his disciples to wait for Him.

How would we do that?

A praycation can be long or short – just as a vacation or staycation! It can be a time of personal retreat over a weekend, or it can be a morning or afternoon spent alone. It could even be an solid hour of prayer in a quiet place.

During a women’s retreat some years back, I chose to spend the afternoon free time in prayer and contemplation in the cemetery at the convent where we were retreating. I walked among the grave markers and prayed for each of the women whose bodies were there; I prayed for each of the women attending the retreat. I walked for a while this way, in peace and quiet surrounded by the autumn leaves. When I began praying for the words of the evening session I was to present, God interrupted my prayers with a directive: Go back to your room and re-write the evening session completely. I asked God to repeat that and He did. So indeed I spent the remainder of the free time re-writing, and He made sure it flowed from the fingertips onto the page.

What would God say to you if YOU spent some time on praycation?