Should you pray when everything is fine?

Nothing requires it, which is exactly why the question comes up. A happy day is not a day without God: it is a day when you do not need him to do anything. The prayer of that day has no use to point to. It only says that the relationship does not stop when the need stops.

What do you say to God when you have nothing to ask?

Almost nothing. That nothing is missing today, and that you are telling him so. You can add a thank you, but without making a list. James 5:13 gives the cheerful another form than asking: "Let him sing praises." A song claims nothing and explains nothing: it fills the time with someone.

Why is it hard to pray when you are happy?

Because for many people prayer switches on with the alarm and switches off with it. Sometimes there is also a half-superstitious fear, as if naming the happiness exposed it, or unease at being well while others are not. Deuteronomy saw it: forgetting God is placed in plenty, once you are full, not in the desert.

Is it wrong to pray only when things are hard?

No. It is true of almost everyone, and a prayer of distress is worth no less for arriving late. But you do not speak in the same voice to someone you only call for help and to someone you also talk to on quiet days. One minute on the evening of a good day is enough to make the difference.

Prayer when things are going well: nothing to ask

There are days with nothing to report. Nobody is ill, work is holding, the house is calm, and in the evening you notice you have not prayed. Not out of refusal: for want of a reason. For many of us prayer switches on with the alarm. When the alarm goes quiet, so does the prayer.

This page starts there. Not to shame anyone who prays only in trouble, which is nearly everyone, but to look at what prayer becomes when it has nothing to ask.

The suspicion

Sometimes it dawns on you all at once, thinking back over what you have said to God for months: requests, worries, the names of people who are sick. Then comes a discomfort, almost a question of honesty. If I only speak to him when I need him, what am I telling him about the two of us?

The discomfort is healthy. It does not ask you to invent worries so as to have something to pray about, or to force an enthusiasm you do not feel. It only asks you to notice that a happy day is not a day without God. It is a day when you do not need him to do anything. That is not the same thing.

Where Scripture puts the forgetting

We tend to imagine that God gets lost in hardship. Deuteronomy says almost the opposite. When Moses speaks, the people are coming out of forty years in the desert, and it is what comes next that worries him. “Beware lest you forget the Lord your God,” he says, and the sentence runs on:

lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built fine houses, and lived in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; then your heart might be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God.

— Deuteronomy 8:12-14 (World English Bible)

The danger named is not rebellion. It is forgetting. And the forgetting does not happen in the desert, where everything is lacking and people cry out. It happens at the table, once they are full. The text does not condemn plenty: fine houses are not a sin, and neither are flocks. It only says that this is where memory slips, because nothing comes along to wake it.

Two verses earlier, the same chapter gives the gesture that goes with it.

You shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you.

— Deuteronomy 8:10 (World English Bible)

The order matters. Eat, be full, then bless. Not before, to get the meal: after, when there is nothing left to get. That is exactly the prayer of a day when things are going well. It comes once the need is met, at the very moment it is no longer of any use.

Not quite a thank you

You might think the prayer of happy days comes down to thanks. Thanks are part of it, and a gratitude prayer teaches how to say them without turning them into a list. But thanks keep one foot in the logic of need: they answer something received. On a day when things are going well there is often nothing in particular to name. Everything is simply where it belongs.

James, in a letter that is otherwise stern, sorts it out in two questions.

Is any among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praises.

— James 5:13 (World English Bible)

He does not tell the cheerful to give thanks. He gives them another form: sing. A song asks nothing, explains nothing, draws up no balance. It fills the time with someone’s presence. It is no accident that praise, which speaks of God for who he is, finds its most natural ground on happy days, while on flat days it has to work at it.

You do not need to be able to sing. It is enough to remember that the prayer of a happy day does not have to justify being there.

A prayer for when things are going well

Here is a prayer written for this page. It asks for nothing, on purpose.

Lord, today I have nothing to ask of You. Everything is holding, for now, and I know how fragile that is. That is not why I have come. I have come because You are there even when I do not need You, and I would like to remember it. Keep me from calling You only for help. Let this day count between us too.

The second line matters most. Many people do not dare pray in happiness out of a kind of superstition: to say it aloud would be to expose it, almost to tempt it. Naming the fragility, and then saying that is not why you came, defuses the fear without denying it.

Permission to be happy

One last reluctance remains, quieter than the others: guilt at being well while others are not. It is honourable, and it can also become a way of refusing what is given. Ecclesiastes, who is nobody’s fool, settles it.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider; yes, God has made the one side by side with the other.

— Ecclesiastes 7:14 (World English Bible)

Be joyful. It is an imperative, not a permission granted through gritted teeth. The same verse knows that adversity will come, and it still does not ask you to watch for it while you are happy. Each day receives what belongs to it, and a happy day receives being happy.

One minute, tonight

One concrete step, only one. If the day has been good, with nothing in particular about it, keep one minute before you sleep. Do not make a list. Just say, in your own words: nothing was missing today, and I am telling You so. Then be quiet for a little.

That minute prepares nothing, protects against nothing, earns nothing. That is what sets it apart from almost every other. And little by little it changes the voice of harder days, because you do not speak in the same way to someone you only call for help and to someone you also talk to when things are fine. If you would like a set time to hold on to, a daily prayer offers one that does not depend on what the day brings.

Days when nothing is missing are not days without God. They are the only ones when you can speak to him expecting nothing.