Lord, I may be half-asleep, but I'm here.

A question for the new year: what happens when we don’t pray properly? It’s a question I’ve found myself pondering this past week.

Each morning I aim to pray the Lord’s Prayer, usually with Jacqui. It has been part of our daily routine for several years now — something I do almost instinctively, like brushing my teeth or making my porridge.

But one morning this week I suddenly realised that we had reached the Amen with my mind elsewhere. I had said the words, faithfully enough, but without really attending to them.

And that raised an awkward question: do I repeat the prayer — this time properly — or do I simply leave it with the Lord and move on?

Which made me wonder whether St Augustine of Hippo was right when he observed: “If the heart does not pray, even though the tongue does, there is no prayer.”

Of course, most of us struggle with concentration in prayer, whether praying alone or with others. Our minds wander; we get distracted; we worry about Everton. Sometimes we are in pain, overtired, or simply not functioning very well. It happens.

We can all identify with John Donne, who confessed with characteristic honesty: “I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in, and invite God and his angels thither; and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.”

The good news is that such distraction does not invalidate our prayer. “You call that prayer!” sneers the devil. Yes — if it is offered in Jesus’ name. To use the theological jargon, praying in his name is not only necessary; it is also sufficient.

The real danger, as Augustine warns us, is when prayer becomes a technique rather than a relationship. Jesus himself cautions us: “When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” (Matthew 6:7)

In his vivid paraphrase, Eugene Peterson gives Jesus a distinctly American accent: “The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense.” (Matthew 6:7, The Message)

Jesus gave us the Lord’s Prayer — just thirty-six words in Luke’s English translation — so that ordinary people could pray without eloquence or originality. And Archbishop Rowan Williams reminds us that “Prayer is not a technique for getting what we want, but a practice that trains our attention on God.”

Familiarity does not equal emptiness; ritual does not cancel sincerity.

And there is more to us than our conscious minds. In truth, most of who I am is hidden even from me — rather like my autonomic nervous system, which my faithful Garmin watch quietly monitors each morning.

So when the apostle Paul urges us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), he is pointing to a way of living before God, inspired and sustained by the Holy Spirit. In ways we cannot fully understand — but may sometimes glimpse — prayer continues even beneath our awareness.

Wonderfully, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit it is already happening. As Paul reassures us: “That very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26)

Such prayer can exist before language, beneath thought, even beyond intention.

This means that prayer is not something we generate so much as something we enter. When words fail, when prayer feels mechanical or distracted, when grief, anxiety, or exhaustion leave us unable to form a sentence — when all we can offer is habit, or simply showing up — the Holy Spirit is praying for us from within.

This is not an excuse not to pray. Rather, it is a reassurance about what sustains prayer when ours falters. We do not pray in order to summon God’s attention; we pray because God is already at work within us.

And perhaps that quiet recognition is prayer at its most honest. Not polished or impressive, but real. The God we address is not waiting to be persuaded by our eloquence, nor impressed by our concentration. He is already present, already attentive, already inclined toward us in love, such is his glorious grace.

Faithful habits, it turns out, matter more than flawless moments. A prayer returned to day after day — even imperfectly — slowly shapes the heart. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us how to live and what to desire, not through intensity, but through steady repetition.

We are finite, frail, and often tired. God knows that better than we do. If some days prayer feels thin or distracted, that does not mean it is wasted. It simply means we are human. Grace meets us there.

And so tomorrow morning — porridge made, day beginning — we pray the Lord's prayer once more. Not because we get it right, but because we are loved.

“LORD, I may be half-asleep – but I’m here”