We live in an era where we utilize artificial intelligence to do so many things for us. From making appointments, booking flights, billing, and spreadsheets—even drafting the outline for a book that we want to write. It’s true that artificial intelligence can get that done for you. There are even Bible apps, devotional trackers, and prayer journals that use AI to help people engage with Scripture daily.
But there are certainly many things worth doing by hand, and slowly.
Recently, I decided that I wanted to create a blog about my spiritual journey. I wanted to include a section for any possible reader to send a prayer request. I thought about using a form where the user would enter their personal info, their prayer request, and then indicate whether or not to share it on the Prayer Requests Page so that other prayer warriors could join in praying for each other.
One option was to create a Google Sheet, where clicking on a link in the blog would bring them to where they would enter all their data. Another option was to have a form on the blog where the user fills it out with the request and then it’s sent to a corresponding email.
AI could create a form and then efficiently do everything for me, even filing it by category and sending a reminder to check the inbox. All I might need to do is open the form, email, or Google Sheet and pray over the request. Done and done.
But here is where it is important to consider doing things by hand, slowly.
When somebody asks you to pray for them, the prayer can just take a thoughtful moment where you can just say their name, and then say a quick prayer over them and then let it be that.
But if they take the time to write out a prayer, and they want their request to be held in prayer by a community of people who care, the physical act of typing their prayer into a shared location becomes more than data entry. It means taking the time to think about what they’re praying for. I’m just really taking time to sit with their prayer request and bring it before God.
Artificial intelligence most certainly could get the data itself to where I needed it to go. But my thoughts are about actually taking time to pray for others. To read it, pray over it, and then share it with prayer warriors who also feel called to do so.
Taking it slow and being conscious and mindful of what’s being asked is taking the time, attention, and care for another.
Another way to consider that slow and mindful approach as a prayer warrior, is the physical act of writing the prayer request by hand. I have several beautiful notebooks that I bought just because they’re beautiful. I have not written in any of them yet because I have a hard time writing due to nerve damage and disfigurement of my hands. But somehow, taking those beautiful notebooks, writing a person’s prayer request, and then praying over the book seems not only a prayer, but an act of beauty out of love for God. That difficulty makes the writing itself part of the prayer—each and every word takes effort, and that effort itself is an offering.
I also imagine how many times each person would be prayed for by picking up that book, putting a hand over it, and praying for each person named there.
Artificial intelligence certainly can help us resolve some problems, but when it comes to prayer and the conscious effort to connect to God, we humans need each other. Those apps have their place, but they can’t sit with a name the way we can with one another.
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