Conversations about Belief

My wife and I had a great time reading a blog post at Spectrum Magazine by Michael Bennie entitled: A Prayer-time Prayer

The opening paragraphs describe a scene that is probably similar to that seen in many Christian households during worship:

I want our evening prayer time to be fun. But I also want my kids to stick around for the fun. They do have fun during prayer time; it’s just fun completely unrelated to the prayer process. They laugh, play, box, squirm, bounce, wrestle, bite, kiss, tickle and wiggle, and that is fun.

The author goes on to describe the difficulty in maintaining a reverential spirit during worship with children while not drowning out their individuality and genuine love for the process.  His description of his daughter Melia’s “Tourette’s-like” prayer style (no doubt adopted by listening to her parents is priceless and sobering.

Melía, for example, has learned to pray the way we have modeled, even when there is no competing noise. “Dear Jesus–I’M PRAYING! Thank You for this wonderful–I’M PRAYING! Thank You for Mommy and Daddy and–I’M PRAYING! Thank You for Brielle and Ashlyn–MOMMY, I’M PRAYING!”

He then goes on to list the various ways in which parent’s can deal with this issue.  His suggestions (while comical) are thougtful and perhaps the kind of thing that many parents have considered.  The comments posted at the bottom of the blogpost are also worthy of consideration.

Mr. Bennie summarizes his thoughts by indicating that one of the issues that we as parents must face is that of  being desperate to have our children “get this prayer thing now” because of our fear that we have never really gotten it ourselves.

A poignant thought.

Tags: Adventism, belief, children, faith, Prayer
Filed under: Parenting, Prayer, children