It was me and wife's turn to give talks in sacrament meeting this past Sunday at church. The topic we were given to speak on was "How to Give Earnest Prayers". I've known the mechanics of how to give a prayer for a while; I've been given prayers in public since I was in my teens (right around the time I joined the LDS Church.) But it's been a while since I've thought about making sure that my prayers are earnest.
It made me think back to the first time I started praying earnestly, and it was when I prayed really hard for someone else ... on my mission. I think about the families I taught the gospel to and how badly I wanted them to be baptized, and there was no doubt that prayer was crucial in our proselyting efforts. But this doesn't help you if you're not trying to save souls - how do you pray earnestly while you just trying to live?
I thought of my own parable. I compared praying to a modern day programmer ... like myself. With technology advancing so quickly, some may ask the question of how a developer is supposed to keep up with everything. The short answer is that we don't! And since we don't need to use everything all the time, we don't have to. We do the best we can to continue increasing our knowledge of programming concepts. Then, whenever we need more or get stuck, we turn to Google for answers. Once we find what we're looking for, we do our best to apply what we've learned. If we didn't, our jobs would be much, much harder than they are now.
I also believe that our lives can be much harder without constant communication with God. There's no possible way that we can learn all that He knows in this lifetime; and since each of our lives are different, we don't have to. I think we all do the best we can with what we have; but daily prayer to an all knowing Heavenly Father can give us the strength, courage, and knowledge we need to fill in the gaps.
That's my parable! And since everyone knows what Google is (even the kids), it went over pretty well with the congregation ... at least, that what my family and friends told me. It made sense to me anyway.