I heard a pastor tell a story one time of something he saw back in the days of World War II. He was somewhere over in France, and he and a buddy of his were in a house. They happened to be cleaning that house. All of a sudden, the bombs started to fall just as they had begun to mop the kitchen floor.

He said he had a friend with him, a G.I., who was helping him to mop the floor. The floor was just covered with soap and water. When the bombs started to fall, this man tried to run. But the floor was so slippery he couldn’t run. He kept falling down. Finally, he got his footing, and when he got to take a first real step, he stepped in the pail and got it stuck on his foot. That caused him to fall again. When he stood back up, he stepped on the mop, it flew up and hit him in the face and knocked him under the stairs. All the time the bombs are falling on that house.

He said this man was just struggling just to get out of that house and get to safety. In all of that bombing and chaos, he prayed and said, “O God, if you will just help me get out of this mess, I will get out of the next one all by myself.”

Well, that soldier was right to pray in that situation, but he was wrong to say he wouldn’t pray in the next one. You see, we are to turn every care into a prayer, every aggravation into a supplication, and every irritation into an invocation.

We are to pray when we are in trouble, but we are to pray when we are not in trouble. As a matter of fact, if we would give ourselves to more prayer we would get ourselves in less trouble.

James Merritt, Collected Sermons, Sermons.com