I had a little informal gathering the other night, and the topic turned to prayer. A friend of mine asked what is the world's best prayer? I thought he would say the Lords prayer or the Ave Maria or something like that. Instead, I must confess, I was very shocked when he quietly announced "the alphabet." I thought he must be teasing.
The alphabet is not a prayer someone protested, but he proceeded to prove the opposite.
The alphabet he began, is one of the few tools that man has, that is almost infinite in scope. It is an immense treasury. It contains all the thoughts expressed by the wise of the past, of all of the beautiful thoughts shaped and expressed, and those that the yet unborn are going to express. Since God is wisdom, created man needs something as vast as the alphabet to praise him.
In its timeless combinations the alphabet contains the sigh of the wind, the dance of the rain, the sweetness of growing things, the rush of the river, the unrest of the sea; all of the things expressed, or yet to be expressed, are communications with God, according the laws in which he made them.
I began to see what my friend meant. I was almost breathless with the beauty of it, and the others were hanging onto his words, but he didn’t stop there.
Since everything we have comes from God. We need something of almost infinite content to give him back some of his fullness and perfection. That’s what prayer is -- giving him back some of his fullness and perfection. The treasury of the alphabet as yet unexplored; in fact they are almost inexhaustible just like the treasury of music. That’s why I insist that the alphabet is the world's, best prayer and the world's prayer book. For in its limitless combinations, it becomes the cry of finite man to an infinite God, language.