Today I’m thrilled to share the sixth guest post in my guest blog series on the seven practices I write about in my new book, Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church, published by Paraclete Press and released on April 16, 2019. This time, you don’t have to take it from me – each guest shares his or her own stories about how each practice helps him or her experience joy.

This week’s guest post comes from a fellow author and dear friend Mireille Mishriky. Mireille is the author of the popular children’s book series, Philo and the SuperHolies, which I have reviewed on this blog. My favorite, of course, is Philo, Rose, and the Joy SuperHoly, and just a few months ago, Philo and the Faithfulness SuperHoly was released and became an instant favorite in my family. In her guest post below, Mireille writes about the sixth practice, arrow prayers.

By Mireille Mishriky

Imagine if Jesus had not taught us how to pray “Our Father who art in Heaven.”  This prayer is perfection. It is simple, and yet it covers all of our needs and beyond (bread: both physical and spiritual), our desire for salvation, our need to forgive and love one another, our admission that we require assistance to resist evil, our longing for protection. It is all there.

It is the first prayer that we learn and the one we repeat, sometimes unconsciously, on autopilot, time and time again. Before a plane takes off, we pray – before entering the operating room, we turn to it again; or before a big exam at school, it never fails.

 I find it remarkable how our Lord anticipated that we might find praying challenging. I guess I should not be astonished as our Lord anticipated each an every one of our needs. Praying is often cited as the area where most Christians struggle. We struggle to find the time, we struggle to find the words, we struggle to remain focused during prayer and not to let our minds wander off (and mine finds innovative ways to wander off, rather easily).

 I always admired those who can pray out loud, spontaneously when called upon. You know the drill: you are in a servants’ meeting, Sunday School class, or even at a family gathering and you are suddenly called upon to pray out loud. I typically refuse and try to pass the blessing to someone else, not out of any sense of humility but out of every sense of incapability.

For someone who is comfortable with words, I am not comfortable with spontaneous prayers. Call it spiritual immaturity, it probably is. Prayer is simply a conversation with God, a Father who adores us, one who accepts two words as He accepts one thousand words. Even the Bible mentions how prayers need not be lengthy to be acceptable to the eyes of the Lord:

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.” (Matthew 23:14, KJV)

Knowing all this, I was thrilled when I stumbled on Arrow Prayers (and specifically, the Jesus Prayer) a few years ago. I can’t recall the exact time or the occasion, but I remember the effect this prayer had on me.

“My Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.”

Never heard of Arrow Prayers?

Phoebe Farag Mikhail does a phenomenal job explaining it in her book: Putting Joy into Practice. In her book, Phoebe explains what the arrow prayer is: “While arrow prayers can be traced back to Old Testament times, there regular practice in Christianity was introduced to us by the desert fathers…” and again, “In his historical review of arrow prayers, Irene Hausherr derives a definition based on St. John Cassian’s explanation: ‘a formula that can easily be repeated several times a day by people who are preoccupied with other tasks.’”

 I have turned to arrow prayers in times when I felt helpless and useless. 

Recently, a dear friend sent me a message, one night, about the challenges she was encountering. She sounded hopeless, and I simply did not have the heart to send her a message with a bunch of clichés. I was frustrated that there was nothing, concrete that I could do, and I honestly had no idea what to write back. And then it dawned upon me that I could recite an Arrow Prayer on her behalf. Which is what I did, repeatedly.

After feeling useless and discouraged, Arrow Prayers refocused my mind on Who is in control and at Whose feet we should be laying down our burdens. I sent my friend a message informing her of how many times I had recited Arrow Prayers on her behalf and encouraged her to follow suit.

Did her problems suddenly disappear? No. Did her sorrow turn to Joy? Not right away. It turned to comfort, to acceptance, to hope and eventually, Arrow Prayers lead us to our Lord, the source of all Joy.

After graduating with a major in journalism, Mireille’s career path took an unexpected turn away from her beloved pen and paper. It took an equally unexpected turn of events for Mireille to start writing again. After spending many hours (too many!) watching superhero cartoons with her son, she realized that most Christian children are unaware of their own superpowers! She set about creating the SuperHolies: the Fruits of the Holy Spirit re-imagined as super powers in order to grab the children’s attention and teach them about their faith and its glory. Follow her blog and learn more about her upcoming publications here.

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