20th February 2026

The famous painter Picasso did not believe in God, but one day he felt very hurt when his cousin, a devout Catholic, said, ‘Pablo, I know you’re an atheist and don’t believe in prayer, so I don’t include you in my prayers.’ Picasso might not have believed in God, but he somehow believed in love, and he felt that in not praying for him his cousin was withholding his love.

A question. Very often when a tragedy has hit the headlines – another mass shooting, or a plane crash – people in the public eye (usually politicians, on the local or national scene) say something like ‘Our thoughts are with you (or them).’ That’s good – I myself do appreciate it when someone tells me ‘I’m thinking of you.’ But it’s not quite the same as ‘You’re in my prayers’ (or, as Quakers say, rather beautifully, ‘I’m holding you in prayer’). It’s not surprising that in an increasingly secularised society, even to mention prayer sounds intrusive and embarrassing. But are we Christians partly responsible for this, giving people the impression that prayer is a kind of magic manipulation? Whatever questions we have about prayer and ‘how it works’, Christian praying goes a step further than ‘thinking about’, though it includes that. Prayer is a Spirit-led journey, of imagination and compassion, into a place of need and, opening our hearts and minds, asking for God’s grace and healing to be manifest there. It isn’t just thinking (though that is included) but loving. Prayer is yearning, and learning – to love. Prayer is itself a way of loving. Even Picasso understood that.

Keith Clements