These days my two boys argue about
who will pray before we eat our dinner, so we let them both pray.
The two year old prays in his own language, the only audible words
are 'helicopter' and 'tate', which means aero plane (both my boys
love anything that flies), but luckily the Lord understands what he
is saying. Now the four year old we can understand. And what is
interesting to me is that his whole prayer is saying thank you for
everything. Thank you for the food, thank you for the trees, thank
you for the table, thank you for the aero planes, thank you for my
father and mother, thank you for my teacher and so it goes on and
on. Sometimes I have to say amen, otherwise our food will be ice
cold. But this made me think. He never once asks for anything, he
simply says thank you for literally everything. And I don't think
he is unique in this, I have heard other kids pray as well and they
also say thank you the whole time. It is lovely for me. Nobody
taught them how to pray and yet they know what is most important,
and that is to say thank you.
I think we as adults lose that part
of our prayer. We might remember to say thank you, but we don't
make it a big part of our prayer. We tend to ask a lot more. Now it
is not wrong to ask, Jesus told us to "Ask and we will receive",
but I think we can learn something from these children. After all
Jesus said that the Kingdom of God belongs to children (people with
childlike faith).
Some time ago I wrote down some of
the things that I prayed and trusted the Lord for. Now I forgot all
about it and the other day I casually paged through that book again
and I was astonished when I realized that all my prayers were
answered. Maybe not as I thought they would be, but it was. And
then I turned red as I realized that I never thanked the Lord for
answering them. Never thanked Him that He didn't give me what I
asked for, because now in hindsight I realized it would not have
been good for me. I totally forgot.
Jesus himself was sad when only one
of the ten lepers returned to thank Him that He healed him. And we
are just as guilty. We need to be more like children, thanking the
Lord and being happy that we are in His Presence. Next time when
you pray, remember to say thank you too.
Colossians 3: 15 "And always be
thankful."
Colossians 3: 16 "Sing Psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts."
Lord, please forgive us for
forgetting to thank you that You look after us with such tender
care. We thank you for that and we trust our future in Your hands.
Amen