Creating and Maintaining a Prayer List: Part One

A prayer list is an important tool for the Christian spiritual life. Most of us need written lists because our memories are not good enough for us to rely exclusively upon them. My first prayer list consisted of slips of paper which I kept inside the cover of my Book of Common Prayer (BCP). Since I use the BCP offices, this was a convenient place to keep the information. Initially the pieces of paper were unorganized — just notes made as I became aware of needs or when people asked for prayer.

As my prayer life matured and I found myself having more requests to remember, I decided I needed better organization for my prayer list. I purchased the Personal Prayer Notebook from the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer. (It is still available from the Canadian AFP: click here for information.) This small three-ring binder (which I still have after about thirty-five years) has general information on prayer and tabbed sections for Adoration, Thanksgiving, Confession, Intercession, and Petition. Since it is a loose-leaf binder, one can insert pages with one’s own intercessions and petitions, or materials one finds useful in prayer such as meditations. This binder served me well for decades.

Some years ago I purchased an Android tablet. One of the primary uses of my tablet is reading. I soon realized that I could easily copy the BCP Daily Offices and Psalter to my tablet and use the tablet for daily prayer. Having copied the Offices and Psalter, I decided also to copy my prayer list to the tablet. For several years I have produced my prayer list pages (for the Personal Prayer Notebook) on my computer. Having my prayer list in a word processor document made updating quick and easy. I produced a pdf document from the word processor document and copied it to my tablet. The Aldiko Book Reader app makes it easy to use the office, psalter, and personal prayer list by switching among the documents as needed. And that is what I currently use for daily prayer. I have everything on one small tablet which is easy to transport and the files are simple to access and use. I also have the Bible (pdfs of both the ESV and the NET) for the daily scripture readings. No more juggling books, and since Aldiko automatically keeps my place for me, I don’t have to worry with bookmarks or ribbons. It is especially handy when travelling as I everything is on my tablet which I would take on a trip anyway. It’s lightweight, and easy to pack and carry.