Praying in the Gaps

There are gaps between coming and going. Gaps between doing one thing and doing another. And these gaps are opportunities for moments of prayer.

Last Thursday, I got more praying done than I had the entire previous week — but it wasn’t because I spent an entire three-hour block in prayer. It wasn’t because I prayed once in the morning, once at noon, and once at night. It was simply because I prayed in the gaps.

Most often, Christians refer to “standing in the gap” as a reference to Ezekiel 22:30, where the Lord searched for a man among them to repair the wall and stand in the gap before Him. We think of intercessory prayer — rightly so — as the one who stands in that gap, crying out to the Lord on behalf of those on the other side. That is intercession.

But that’s not the gap I’m talking about.

Photo by Jacob McGowin on Unsplash

As I was driving recently, I noticed how many stoplights I had to wait at. I watched other lanes get the green and go. Then another direction got the green and went. Meanwhile, I counted the seconds until my turn. When I finally got the green, crossed the road, and continued down the road, I began to think about all the gaps in my day.

There are gaps between coming and going. Gaps between doing one thing and doing another. And these gaps are opportunities for moments of prayer.

I began to think of all the transitions in a typical day: from one meeting to the next, from sending an email to answering the phone, from walking into a store to returning to the car from the checkout lane. These are gaps.

And during these gaps, rather than counting the seconds until it’s our turn to place an order at the sandwich counter, we can fill them with brief prayers. Our prayers don’t have to be eloquent. They don’t have to be long. But they can be frequent.

These little transitions throughout our day are opportunities to ask the Lord for favor, for grace, for wisdom, for mercy, for help, for joy, for peace. Before we pick up a ringing phone, we can let it ring one more time and ask the Lord for whatever might be needed in that conversation. Before we answer the doorbell, we can do the same. There are gaps everywhere when we look.

Too often, our minds are occupied with everything else. We fill them with whatever is on our social media feed. In the waiting room, we scroll. That waiting room gap might be ten, twenty, or thirty minutes. The gap between ordering at the speaker and pulling up to the drive-through window might be two or three minutes. These are perfect moments for prayer. These are God-given opportunities to talk to God.

And what can we pray in those moments? Everything. We can praise God for who He is. We can express gratitude for His goodness, mercy, and love. We can sing a hymn. We can recite a scripture. We can pray on someone else’s behalf:

Lord, please be with this woman in her doctor’s visit today.

Lord, please help my son at his job interview.

Lord, please be present in our council meeting this evening.

Lord, please bless the person taking my order.

Lord, please help our pastor minister to the young couple coming to him tomorrow for marriage counseling.

I was very intentional about this last Thursday, and I want to be more intentional going forward. Let’s begin to ask the Lord in the morning, during our regular time of prayer, to prompt us throughout the day — to look to Him, to ask for help, to give Him praise, to express our thanks, to intercede for someone else.

Every gap we have is an opportunity to pray in the gaps — to stand in that place Ezekiel describes and cry out, “Father, please — whatever is needed.”

Don’t let these gaps go wasted, preoccupied with drifting, daydreaming, or scrolling. Fill our minds instead with the Word of God and prayers to God. In this way, we remain consistently connected to our Savior and to His Spirit — because we see those gaps not as delays, but as opportunities.

Oh, we got stopped by the train again. Fine — if we need to text someone that we’ll be late, do that. But for the rest of those red blinking lights, while the bell rings and the cars wait — spend it in prayer. Don’t waste it. Because it is an opportunity to pray in the gaps.