Do You Pray Better Than a Fifth Grader?

First off, my apologies if this title makes your stomach tight. I know, and you know, that prayer is not a contest. If you’re praying at all, you’re doing it right. However, I had a prayer experience this week that had me thinking about that game show where the grownups compete with school children and the way that some things change and some things stay the same, especially concerning prayer.

Let me explain. Wednesday night at Awana we did a prayer walk. If you have ever helped with Awana, or been in the church when Awana was going on, then you know that it is not for the faint-hearted. Combine an after dinner hour in midweek with confined spaces and varying degrees of hunger and hosility. It makes for a sweaty, cranky bunch. They all need to get a spanking and go straight to bed. I’m talking about the leaders mostly, but some of the children too. It serves the purpose, I guess, but it’s not pretty. You don’t automatically think, “We should try a worship service.” Unless you are Miss Jean. For last week’s activity time, we had a prayer walk in the chapel.

I’m no stranger to prayer walks with children. It’s one of my favorite tricks for burning off that last 30 minutes before parents come to pick them up from VBS. It gets them moving, changes their scenery and lets them do something real. As I said before, I think that all prayer is real whether or not everyone has their eyes closed or is quiet or is pretending to be a ninja or whatever.

My Wednesday night attitude, however, doesn’t generally allow for a lot of creativity or good feelings or flexibility. I need to get in the zone and get the job done. So full of myself and my humanity, I marched my three little charges up the giant staircase and into the chapel to pray without ceasing for thirty minutes until I could go home.

It was pretty much as I had expected. They were into it for a while. They took turns reading the cards and bowed their heads. But then one wanted to go this way and one that way; they started fighting over who could stand where. One had to go to the bathroom, and one wanted to pray for her family members, specifically and in great detail, at every single station. More and more groups poured into the chapel and started moving through the stations. The volume level went up. Some got a bathroom break so we did too, and then we got done with the stations and sat down on a bench to wait.

Maybe it was the low lighting. I started looking around and watching and got that still, small feeling in my chest that God needed me to pay attention. Y’all, I’m not kidding. All those children walking around praying reminded me of us. You know, the grownup church. They were jockeying for position. There were fights over who got to be in a group with whose friend. Some think they can’t pray, and some think they really can. They were bored. They had the world weariness of a group of God’s children who have seen it all and done it all but are too weak to do anything different.

Usually these displays of our fallen nature render me sad and depressed, but this time somehow it made me smile. I can’t explain it. I think Jesus showed up for the Awana prayer walk. Those children, they were beautiful. They laughed and fought and talked and walked and complained and wrote and hugged and hit each other. They prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed. And they were us.

They prayed even though they were bored. A few were into it, but most prayed because there wasn’t anything else to do and someone was leading them. You could tell they weren’t going to pray when they got home. Isn’t that just like us?

We will never grow up. We will continue walking, fighting, posing and pretending. We know that everything we do is temporary and we want to do something real. And that is why we must pray. Prayer brings Jesus down from the realm of eternity into our everyday. Grace falls and changes us, as they say, from a common use to a holy use. I tell you if God can make me smile at Awana, He can make your kitchen table glow like the ground under the burning bush. Like the faces of the children in the chapel. I think the glow is always there. The glow is His presence. It’s just that when you pray, He invites you to glimpse it.

Just in case you’re not convinced I’m adding some verses on prayer that I’ll be mulling over this week. Join me, won’t you?

Luke 11:1 (A good catch phrase. To be repeated several times a day as needed.)

Luke 18:1-17 (The publican probably is most closely related here. How cool that it’s attached to the story about Jesus and the children. Have you ever been taught the story of Jesus and the children as being about prayer? I don’t think I have.)

1 Thes. 5:17 (Always a friendly reminder!)