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I grew up with a mother who often called upon the name of the Lord. And not in vain, either. No, more like, "If the Lord wills...," or "Do you know the Lord?" or "This is the day the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!" Lordy, Lordy, that woman could talk some Jesus.
I grew up with a father who is a Gideon, those people you can thank for reading material when you've forgotten your book and you're alone in a motel room. My dad talks to Jesus like the Man himself has just cooked him breakfast, like they just finished a great round of golf (Jesus won, of course, but complimented my dad on his great game), like they're Facebook friends.
That man can pray.
I grew up watching the Billy Graham crusades. It didn't help that we only had three channels on our TV, and that was when the aluminum foil was placed just right on the antennae, the wind was coming from the East and I was standing on one leg, breathing out of my left nostril. There just weren't a lot of choices for my viewing pleasure.
He looks rather mild here, but homeboy had some scary eyebrows. And at the end of every night of every crusade he would call people to the altar. If you had even a shadow of a doubt, that you were going to heaven, you needed to get your butt down that aisle and in front of that altar. Or at least you should call their 1-800 number. Operators were standing by.
A shadow of a doubt. I've always had a shadow of a doubt. Not that I don't have faith, I do, but who am I to say that I should be let into Heaven?
This little "shadow of a doubt" has always haunted me. It's the reason that when I would come home from high school and no one was home, not even my mother who, to the point of being annoying, was ALWAYS home, I was sure the Rapture had come and left me behind.
I'm at home in the closet, hiding under some dirty clothes. If you, too, have been left behind in the Rapture, that's where you can find me.
I do pray, a lot, about all sorts of things like the lonely person I see standing on the corner, please sweet Jesus, send him some lovin'. Or for my children, lots and lots of pleas for their well-being. The occasional thank you, which is so important, but not as urgent. The rote prayers before dinner and bed. But I hate to pray out loud. To me it's such a private, personal time, a time that is fraught with great potential for embarrassment.
So I avoid it.
The month of May is my month for teaching Sunday school in our little church. I teach the 4th and 5th graders, but I haul in anyone from 3rd to 8th grades if they want to join us rather than sit in the service. I'm an equal-opportunity Sunday school teacher.
This month I threw the curriculum to the wind and decided to talk about prayer. And guess what? My first week teaching was prayer week. I hadn't even known, so I know it was a sign.
Our first week (and second, and part of the third...) we made Prayer Journals. I bought stickers and brought out the scrapbooking supplies I have at home and each kid designed his or her own prayer journal.
I love the idea of a prayer journal. I had used prayer journals myself and wanted our kids to understand how writing down prayers, especially worries, is a great way of relinquishing them.
We talked about some prayer warriors of different faiths, like Gandhi, who meditated for an hour a day and two hours on stressful days.
Some kids wrote quotes on their journals. Bow wrote the quote from Gandhi, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Kate's Noah wrote, in stickers, "God, we are forever friends."
As usual, I learned more from them than they did from me.
Without a shadow of a doubt.
Amen.
--A
