Praying for our work among families and children
I wish I were better at praying. I sometimes have nightmare visions of arriving in heaven and being accosted by people who are surprised - in a charitable and Christian way of course, as it is heaven - that they found, when given the Answers to All Things, that I didn't pray for them as much as they thought I had. My forlorn hope is that before I end up there, I will have got better at it.
'Doing' things is easy (apart from getting round to filling in the tax return or cleaning out the cupboard under the stairs) - it just needs a bit of willpower. Praying is much harder because it is all about attitude and character and relationship and all those intangible important things that make up a personal faith in Jesus Christ - the heart stuff, not the hands stuff; the invisible, not the visible; the bit that goes on behind closed doors rather than in front of the crowds.
And though I'm rubbish at praying, I agree deep in the heart of me that we can 'do' as much as we want but unless God's at work in our doing, we might as well not bother. So our work among children and families might involve staying up till 4am cutting out camel templates; we might attend 39 different training courses; we might be able to lead songs in five-part harmony with all the actions while playing three guitars, a didgeridoo and a barrel organ, but if we're not placing ourselves, the people we're working with and their homes, work, joys and sorrows in the hand of God, we're just resounding gongs or clanging cymbals. It would be like pushing yourself round on a playground roundabout when you could be circling the stratosphere in a space shuttle: two very different dimensions. And we reach the bigger dimension, the place where things really matter, through prayer.
I always seem to come back to the image of huge soft feathery wings like a broody chicken enfolding a room, person or group, and imagine these wings around whatever I'm praying for. I wonder what image you find helpful?
We in our local leadership team had a chat about prayer recently and resolved to meet together to pray before we start, (it's taken us only six years to organise this), to treat the whole session as a prayer walk, and to ask one of our faithful housebound prayer warriors to be praying for us as we charge round 'doing'! Our new curate has come up with the idea of a prayer blanket, making squares of prayers from fabric that can have prayers written on and can then be stitched together as mats for our children and helpers to sit on. The team were asked to come up with prayers to go on bookmarks for the Sunday congregations to take away and use: here are some of their prayers:
- Pray that Jesus would walk among us and touch people in a life-changing way
- Dear Lord, we pray that all who come along will feel relaxed and be blessed by their time here
- I pray that through today's sessions children and families will know more about the love of Jesus and the blessing that can be found through him
- Please pray for any new families and children that come along today
- Pray people will enjoy today and want to come again. Pray they will tell others about our group and ask them to come
And my favourite:
- I pray for everyone and everything that needs praying for
(Now that's what I call delegation.)
If you're interested in exploring different ways of praying, for or with children, the following BRF and Barnabas titles might be useful:
Prayer - a beginner's guide by Jane Holloway
The Path of Celtic Prayer by Calvin Miller
The Jesus Prayer by Simon Barrington-Ward
Tales for the Prayer Journey by Eve Lockett
Famous Prayers Unpacked by Brian Sears
The Lord's Prayer Unplugged by Lucy Moore
You can find further information about all these titles here.
Parenting children for a life of faith by Rachel Turner
As we all set off into the new school year with renewed energy and all the more temptation to 'do', let's take more and more time to place all we 'do' and the people we do it with firmly in God's hands so that his grace can do far more than we ask or imagine.
And when we meet in heaven, please be nice to me.
