Avoiding Repetition in Prayers

This week, we learned about The Lord's Prayer. In our church, we don't recite The Lord's Prayer, mostly because of the whole "vain repetitions" thing. However, there are some prayers we do tend to repeat. Our morning and evening prayers can get repetitive, our opening and closing prayers at meetings seem a bit samey, and I'm pretty sure I've said the same meal-time prayer, word for word, several times. Fortunately, it doesn't take much effort to make these prayers unique. Usually, one can simply slip in some details unique to this particular day/meeting/meal. For example, instead of saying "Please bless this food," we could instead say, "Please bless this ravioli." We might even try to think of what we want to get out of said blessing, other than for the food to "nourish and strengthen our bodies," and ask for those blessings specifically. It does take extra effort, but avoiding vain repetition is possible. In theory, at least. I still need to work on it.