Sometimes I struggle to pray for other people. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t know how.

Why would I presume to know what someone else really needs? People ask for prayers for tensions to be resolved or pains to be healed, but what if God is working in their lives in the midst of the difficulties? Should I really pray for that to be cut short?

Not only that, there’s the risk. What if I pray for something for someone, and it doesn’t happen? Does knowing I prayed for them simply add to their disappointment in the God they thought would provide?

How do we even begin to pray for the complicated relationships of the world system? What do we know about how to solve intertwined oppression of war, poverty, slavery, oppression, and terrorism that God wouldn’t already know or long for? What could my prayers add?

As if staring at a blinking cursor with an approaching deadline, I freeze, wondering what should come after a name or a situation in my prayers.

Subconsciously, I think this is why I forget to pray for other sometimes. I want to avoid the awkward fumbling for words that will surely follow.

I may have found a word that can unlock this for me. A word that can authentically and deeply pray for another person, and for the world, without presuming to know what is actually best. It is a word that simply asks God to do what God does- to heal, restore, and make whole.

Shalom. 

Shalom is the Hebrew word often translated as peace, but it is so much more than the way we view the word peace. Shalom means wholeness, friendship, and healing. Shalom is not simply the absence of strife, it is the presence of God and His restoring love.

Shalom is something we need a lot more of, individually and globally. Shalom is the word I am choosing to pray.

Loving God, bring Your shalom to us.