A Child's Prayer

As I have shared before, we are a family that prays together. While we do pray randomly with our children, we also pray regularly: every meal time, every nap time, and every bed time. 

The other day, while I was putting Hannah to bed, she followed my prayer with a prayer of her own (blah blah represents nonsense sounds she was making; other than that, what follows is a fairly word for word transcript of Hannah's prayer):

Dear Jesus,

Blah blah, Daddy, blah blah Hannah, blah blah Mommy, blah blah blah blah, Baby, blah, Uncle, Auntie, blah blah, 

Jesus, Amen. 

First, I recognized the form. I thought to myself, my daughter is so observant. She has picked up on all the parts of our praying that are common to most of our prayers. We always start out with "Dear Jesus" or "Dear Lord", pray for Hannah and the rest of our family, and end by saying "In the name of Jesus, Amen." (which Hannah has, naturally, shortened).  

Then, I noticed that she had made the connection about praying and talking about people. Though we do pray for our relatives, it is not nearly as 'regular' as the other names listed. Hannah added those herself. 

And as I sat there, a proud father, reflecting upon her prayer, it struck me that whatever part of the form of praying Hannah had picked up on she had also, perhaps unbeknownst to herself, very accurately picked up on the most important substance of our prayers as well. 

Out of all we do in intercessory prayer, the most important pieces are that we speak with Jesus, bring those we love into his presence in our prayers, and pray in His name. Of course everything else is important, and has a place, but the central parts are all there in Hannah's prayer.  

Well done my precious little girl :)