When I was writing The Prayer List, I asked our daughters (now adults) what they remembered about family prayer from their childhoods. Ellen promptly responded by reciting the prayer we most often said together at bedtime:
There are four corners on my bed.
There are four angels round my head.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless this bed that I lay on.
Ellen said to me, “I still say that prayer. It makes me feel safe.”
Safe. Is that what prayer is for? Proverbs 1:33 says, “but he who listens to me will dwell secure / and will be at ease, without dread of evil.”
Today, we are often called “helicopter parents,” because we want so badly to keep our kids safe. We hover and keep watch and are almost afraid to let them out of our sight. I think we forget about the safety of prayer. We know that prayer doesn’t guarantee a life without troubles or tragedies. If that were true, then martyrdom would be a huge contradiction.
Praying does not protect our children from all harm, nor does it even keep them alive. What Proverbs 1:33 says is that prayer—in particular, listening to God—will ease our fears and lift us out of dread. And that freedom from fear is what keeps us from being helicopters and keeps our children free too.
Go today, go do your best and pray, then leave it in the hands of the Lord.
What a beautiful reflection on the benefit of prayer to our feeling of security! I wonder if the movement to being a helicopter parent is due to a movement away from faith in prayer.
Jane, you have given your children a secure base of faith! Blessings.