No Prayer=No Light

...although they knew God, they did not think it worthwhile acknowledging Him or giving Him thanks....and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper.  They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite...They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless (Romans 1:20-31).

Paul's list of degradation that follows a refusal to acknowledge God was written to the Roman Christians living in a pagan culture.  All around them were the very things that Paul writes about in the first chapter of Romans.

In the Old Testament, Psalm 106 has a similar list of degradations more fitting to desert nomads---but having the same exact cause: a refusal to acknowledge what God had done and to thank Him:

• [The Israelites] soon forgot all he had done
• In the desert, they gave way to their cravings...
• challenged Moses....
• fashioned a calf...
• worshipped a metal statue...
• forgot the God who saved them...
• despised the beautiful land...
• did not believe the promise...
• in their tents they complained...
• they joined in the rites of the Baal of Peor...
• ate food sacrificed to dead gods...
• so embittered Moses that rash words crossed his lips...
• mingled with the nations and imitated their ways...
• worshipped their idols...
• sacrificed to the gods their own sons and daughters, shedding innocent blood....
• desecrating the land with bloodshed....
• became adulterers....
• Many times did [God] rescue them, but they kept rebelling and scheming and were brought low by their own guilt.

Both the Old and the New Testaments trace the descent into immorality to a refusal to acknowledge God and to thank Him.  It would follow, then, that the road out of degradation would be praise and thanksgiving, beginning with the works of Creation, the work of His hands.  Prayer may be difficult at first for those who are not used to prayer, but thanksgiving for Creation would almost be a natural response to anyone who looks out of the window...

...who regards the sky and clouds, the sunrise and the sunset;

...who observes the waves of the sea and the birds that dive for fish;

...who sees the colors of the rainbow and the soft blush of a rose;

...who sits still under the shade of a great tree and who feels the caress of a soft breeze;

...who walks barefoot in the yielding grass;

...who watches children at play;

...who sees the effects of love at home and abroad.

If we bow our heads and close our eyes before God, we see everything.  In beginning to give thanks for the works of His hands, we begin to walk in justice and in truth, leaving behind the works of darkness.