Pondering the importance of prayer

MICHELE MARR

I expected to start my Thursday morning last week at the prayer

breakfast organized by the Greater Huntington Beach Interfaith

Council for the National Day of Prayer. Then I was going to get my

hair colored and cut, shop for Mother’s Day and do a dozen-odd

errands to get ready for a 20th anniversary celebration road trip my

husband Michael and I are taking this week.

Instead I was home in bed with the flu. Sick, I know, is sometimes

the only way to get me to slow down, to pause, to stop; I’m sure God

must know that, too.

On Thursday it gave me unexpected time not only to pray but also

to contemplate prayer, the thread of its presence in my life.

I remembered the first prayer I ever learned as a young child; it

seems I learned it as soon as I could talk. I would kneel at my bed

and recite it with my parents standing by.

“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. Amen.”

I remember the prayer as comforting, although, as I silently

recited it, I suspected that now it would be considered too scary to

teach a child. A quick search on the Internet confirmed the

traditional prayer has been revised.

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

Guard me while I sleep tonight,

And wake me safe at dawn’s first light. Amen.”

The second prayer I learned, I learned in school, which now seems

remarkable. In kindergarten we went home for lunch but we were given

a mid-morning snack over which we always sang grace.

“Hark to the chimes,

Come bow your head.

We thank thee, Lord,

For this good bread. Amen.”

From the home where I now live, I can hear the bells of Grace

Lutheran Church peal out the tune to that prayer each hour. It still

washes a sense of peace through me.

I outgrew “Now I lay me down to sleep” and “Hark to the chimes.”

By the time I was a teen I was too angry to want to pray.

I wanted to know why my grandmother had to die so young and why my

mother and father seemed so miserable. But I wouldn’t even do what

someone once said so many people do with prayer, “pray as if God were

a big aspirin pill; coming [to him] only when they hurt.”

It was in a small congregation at Emmanuel Church in Jaffa,

Israel, where I lived for a year, that my confidence in God was

restored. The people prayed in supplication -- no matter was too

small to take to God -- but they prayed even more in praise and

thanksgiving.

They lived what Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, “Be

anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication,

with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the

peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your

hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” -- Philippians 4:6.

For the first time, I saw evidence of prayers answered and

contentment when they weren’t answered as quickly or in the way

someone hoped. I began to understand what Margaret Gibb, author of

“Transformed by Love,” wrote: “We must move from asking God to take

care of the things that are breaking our hearts, to praying about the

things that are breaking His heart.”

In recent years my favorite book of prayers has been a small,

out-of-print book called “Prayers of the Martyrs.” If I had to choose

one prayer from the book to speak for all of them, I would choose the

prayer found in the clothing of a dead child at Ravensbruck

concentration camp.

“O Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but

also those of ill will. But do not remember all of the suffering they

have inflicted upon us: Instead remember ... our fellowship, our

loyalty to one another, our humility, our courage, our generosity,

the greatness of heart that has grown from this trouble. When our

persecutors come to be judged by you, let all of these fruits that we

have borne be their forgiveness.”

The love in that prayer is far beyond me but it paints a clear,

indelible picture. Imagine what kind of world we would have if, by

God’s grace, we all forgave others as we hope to be forgiven. It’s

worth a prayer.

Ruth Graham Bell puts it this way: “Pray for a tough hide and a

tender heart.”

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].