Brief prayers to pray the next time you check your phone

According to recent statistics, most Americans check their phones an average of 186 times per day. This means all throughout the day, typically starting when a person wakes up in the morning until they put their phone down before falling asleep, we are repeatedly taking a look at our screens.

For many, checking their phone happens once every five minutes, as they check into the latest notifications.

At the same time, many of us complain that we don't have any time during the day to pray. We express how busy we are and how there simply isn't a free moment when we can utter a prayer to God.

Here's an idea for us all: What if we spent 2-3 seconds (or even less!) praying a short prayer each time we checked our phone? If we did that, we could permeate our entire day with prayer!

Forming this habit could be a way of what is known as "habit stacking" -- meaning that we attach one habit to another that is already established. This is a great way to incorporate new practices into our day.

Learn more about that here:

In reality, we don't have much of an excuse for not praying during the day, as we have plenty of time to see who is texting us. Its simply a matter of priorities and whether or not we take prayer seriously.

Still, adding a prayer to our phone-check is a way to get started (maybe 186 times a day!)

We may not have the ability to make a holy hour every day, but we certainly have time to send little darts of love to God every five minutes.

Below are some examples of brief prayers that are easy to memorize and that we can attach to our habit of checking our phone.