The Prayers of Children

I love to pray with my kids. It is one of my most favorite things about being a mom. What a special privilege it is to listen each night to the things that are in the depths of their hearts. I think you can tell a lot about a person by what they pray for. You certainly get the opportunity to know what is important to them. I have heard my kids pray for people who are sick or hurting. I have heard them pour out their hearts to God for things that they want for themselves...in our case this is usually for Dad to allow them to have dinner at Culver's or for a puppy. :-) Remember we are still pretty young here. :-)

When you have a special needs child, faith and prayer are very difficult things to teach and to instill. Rob has been working on this with Seth and taught him to say, "Dear Jesus, bless my family. Amen." He has been praying his little memorized prayer for months now. Every night it was the same thing...until the last 2 weeks. He now has a desire to say his own original prayers. I am touched that our son wants to be original in what he shares with his God.

Last week he started out by saying his usual prayer..."Dear Jesus, bless my family. Amen." He then followed that by adding on..."this prayer was brought to you today by the letter S, the letter E and by the number 7." If it has been a while since you've watched PBS, let me just remind you that that is how each episode of Sesame Street closes. We all laughed with him and encouraged him in his original prayer. Telling him that he had done a great job praying.

In the last week he has been expanding on his originality - no longer starting with his little memorized prayer. Tonight his prayer was..."Dear Jesus thank you for the "or" sound in ... corn ... horn ... born ... and ... forlorn. Amen." As I said, it is interesting to listen to what your kids pray. I have to say that I have never heard anyone thank God for the 'or' sound before. But Seth [who is very interested in letters and words] is thankful for it and expressed his thankfulness. I can't wait for prayer time tomorrow night!!