What if you are the answer to someone’s prayers? And what if that prayer isn’t that complicated?

Every day, we face interactions both big and small. It could be the important meeting about that raise or it could simply be the postman knocking at the door. Maybe it’s dinner with your partners, or kids.

In most of those situations, it’s easy to allow ourselves to not really be there, to be present but distant, there in body and not mind. We might rush through dinner with unfinished work on our mind, or fumble in the interview as we try to handle difficult questions. We might grab our post and wordlessly close the door.

However, there is always the person on the other side of the table, or standing at the door, or on the other side of the interview table, who is also living in their own stories and narratives. In those small and large moments, we have a chance to not just interact, but to delight, to be our most honest selves and bring a touch of grace and dignity to the interaction. This matters most with the people who we might feel can’t help us, and it even happens with those closest to us whom we feel “will understand”.

Just right then, something as simple as a look on your face, or an honest and generous remark, could make that person pause for a moment, maybe even light up and hopefully feel seen. At best, it’s all 3. Maybe thats all they needed that day, and you, a stranger, gifted it to them for the cost of…nothing.

Prayers don’t always need to consist of furrowed brows and focused attention. They can happen in a moment, when we choose to see the other person as being just like us.