Do you remember the first time you ever prayed? Think about it for a minute. I can remember saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Kind of creepy for a little kid … “What? I might die in my sleep? Why would God ‘keep’ my soul, and where would He keep it? He’s going to ‘take’ it?”
As an adult I understand the cry of that prayer, especially as I get older. But as a kid, I just wanted to dream about bike rides, jumping from vines that hang from trees, and laughing with my friends. But the reality is, all over this big world children are lying down at night and they don’t know if they will awake in the morning. Sometimes I wonder, which is more tragic, their plight in living such a horror, or ours in living in such ignorance, and complacency.
As I begin a series on prayer, and a closer look at how Jesus taught us to pray, I hope I will become more sensitive to the world around me. I hope I learn that prayer isn’t just about me … “Our Father in heaven.” It’s about all of us that are in this, together – “Our.” And I hope that my focus will become much more on the God who is not just “in my heart”, but is a much bigger god that resides in heaven; a place where He can see everything that is going on, and is “hallowed” so much so, that he can actually do something about what is going on.
Teach us to pray Lord.
