Children’s Prayers

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 8, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 48.

Children’s Prayers

Children’s prayers are sometimes intensely quaint and amusing, and, at the same time, sublimely real to them, and no doubt acceptable to Him who interprets with fatherly tenderness their strangely expressed yearnings. One little one in Britain prayed to the Lord Jesus, “Do try to make me a good girl; and, if at first You don’t succeed, try, try again!” Another besought the Lord to make her “absolutely pure”—“like Cadbury’s cocoa!” Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, prayer, like praise, is perfected. It is not the consistency of well-ordered speech, but the higher consistency of desires that accord with His will, that assures answer. Mr. Spurgeon, after the stumbling first prayer of a young convert, quietly added, “Take the meaning, Lord!” And, as He reads the meaning, many an unlettered, ungrammatical, and even unwarranted petition undoubtedly gets a gracious hearing and an equally gracious response.—Selected.