I am in the midst of reading this book, "Circle of Grace", by Gregory and Suzanne M. Wolfe. I am enjoying the ideas and concepts that I have read so far, although there is alot of universalism that I am having to sift through as I read. However, the concept of incorporating a discipline of prayer into my children's lives is something I have been trying to do since they were born. We have the nighttime ritual of prayer before bed, but I wanted to also incorporate prayer throughout the day. My goal is to have morning and evening prayer together with them. So, last week I started with just a simple song and a simple prayer ending the time with the Lord's Prayer. My kids are very young and of course their attention span is very limited. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. We've just got 7 days under the belt, but it has really helped set a morning routine into place. Before we really start the day, it isn't started without first spending time with God. I also believe in the practice of blessing our children. In my husband's Puerto Rican culture, children go up to their parents in greeting and say, "Bendicion", which literally means "bless me". There are some nice prayers of blessing in this book.Then this past Saturday, my husband got his favorite magazine in the mail, Touchstone, and in it was an article about watering down a very well known bedtime prayer. I don't know if you prayed this prayer when you were young but it went like this:
"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".
The modern version that, I must say, I pray with my children is:
"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
Angels watch me through the night, till I awake to morning light."
I don't know about you, but for me, praying that original prayer at night before I slept, made me stay up pondering death and whether I was going to die that night or not.
The author of this article contests that we should not water that original prayer down. Indeed the truth of death is scary, but it is something he believes children should and can handle.
If I were Winnie the Pooh, I'd have to go to my "thinking spot" to really contemplate this idea.
My first reaction is my kids are too young to understand about death and dying and I should introduce this later in their lives. But then I taught them about Jesus dying on the cross for our salvation, and we sing a song about it.."He died on the cross, he died on the cross, all because he loved us he died on the cross".
My mind is still thinking, do you have any thoughts?
2 comments:
I prayed the old Now I lay me prayer growing up too. I also was taught the Lord's Prayer at bedtime. We have tried doing the shorter catechism with our kids, singing the hymn from the previous Sunday, etc. Habits, no matter how long you do them are all too quickly undone. :( Discipline, perseverance...wish I had more.
I prayed the older prayer too - and I remember laying there thinking about "if I should die before I wake"....I didn't want to go to sleep!
It's awesome that you are raising the little ones with prayer during the day as part of their normal life. We all struggle to obtain discipline and habits as adults that your children will never have to struggle with because it was just a normal part of their life.
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