August 1, 2026
Beloved of God,
Mother Teresa used to say to the young nuns in her order: “Do not worry about the things you have not done because you were busy praying. For, if you pray, you will do better things – and do them better.”
In other words, a major and essential benefit to dedicating the right amount of time to prayer is that we will, thanks to our praying, be improved in what we do and in how we do what we do. Prayer changes us so that we do the right things rightly.
No wonder then that Martin Luther observed, “To be a Christian without praying is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”
We should “pray without ceasing” as 1 Thessalonians 5:17 commands us. Yet, while prayer should be our constant practice, it is valuable to make special times for it – times in which we can linger in it, keep continually focused in it, and engage in the divine-human dialogue more deeply and intensely.
Some people call August Covenant’s quiet month because, while we still do everything we normally do Sunday mornings and while we as always stand ready to deal with emergencies and other unexpected things, we suspend almost all of our normal weekday ministries.
Yet, though this August will indeed be Covenant’s quieter month (as measured by activity), the two of us prefer to think of August as Covenant’s more prayerful month. We can make it our more prayerful month because we are free of many of the activities that may deprive us of the time that would make our praying optimal.
We quote it often, but John Bunyan was invaluably wise when he said: “We can do more than pray after we have prayed; but we cannot do more than pray until we have prayed.”
God bless us all as He leads to pray and do according to His will!
Warmly in Christ,
Rob & Adele
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