EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
Editor's Note
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Now I lay my head to sleep… “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food.” Often, we never get past the perfunctory mealtime prayer because as the hunger gnaws at the children, they have all but surrendered to the first mouthful. After all, it is 6:30 at night, they last snacked at 3:30, and there isn’t all that much more to bless than the food. Or is there? We’ve taught our boys to add a prayer of the day whenever possible. It follows the food part and begins like this: “Please God, please God…” You can fill in the blanks. They pray for the ill to be well, for the boys in Iraq to be safe, for their own nephew, a Navy pilot, to be safe, for the world to be safe, for mom to be safe and, occasionally, for dad to stay home from work one day. Grandparents are big on the prayer list. Sports are, too. Baseball takes a lot of prayer because it requires a lot of prayer. The power of prayer is a bit over the heads of our still-young children. Or is it? Our 12-year-old, at one point, had the Old Testament books memorized. And the 8-year-old twins can talk quite clearly about their Sunday School lessons. Whether they yet understand the clear connection between a prayer and its ability to travel up through the clouds to God, I am not sure. But they knew that God could hear their voices even before they believed that Santa would as well. Religion is an ongoing sell to children. It’s a hard sell to adults who haven’t yet embraced God, or those who let Him slip away some years earlier. With religion, as with prayer, there often is no instant gratification. I mean, we’ve all asked if God has heard our prayers. And if we’ve ever looked to heaven for some sign to free us from despair, for the most part, all we’ve gotten is sky, and all we’ve felt is the night air. We have to believe. As we walked from the Little League field the other day, joyous in our season-beginning victory, I was stopped by a friend. His cousin, who had lost a teen a few years ago to a car accident, had just lost her second and last child. To a car accident. Suddenly, wondering whether the final score had been 17-2 or 21-2 did not matter. In front of me were two of my three boys, and the thought that they could be gone overwhelmed me. I took off my baseball cap, instinctively showing respect for the mom. “What can you possibly say to your cousin?” I asked plaintively, reaching and touching my friend’s shoulder. “I mean, you lose one child and, harsh as it may seem, you can tell her that she is blessed to still have another. What do you say to her when she has nothing left?” My friend had just visited her. He had held her tight. She had asked him for strength. He told her that there was little he could say, but that there was one powerful thing he could do. He could pray. On we went to another sporting event, and on toward the field walked my friend. His two sons had baseball games to be played. And somewhere in this land of ours, a mother is in need of a prayer. “Please God, please God…” Craig Reem Executive Editor |
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