This was read out at church last Sunday morning, by the people organising the ’samaritan’s purse’ project.
It made me cry:
A prayer for our children
Our Lord, Creator and Sustainer of all our lives,
We come before you today to pray for the children…
Who sneak biscuits before tea-time,
Who erase holes in math’s workbooks,
Who can never find their shoes.
And we pray for those who stare at photographs from behind barbed wire,
Who can’t run down the street in a new pair of trainers,
Who were born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,
Who never go to the pantomime,
Who live their lives in an X-rated world.
We pray for children, who bring us sticky kisses, and a fistful of dandelions,
Who hug us in a hurry, and forget their lunch money.
And we pray for those who never get pudding,
Who have no comfort blanket to drag behind them,
Who watch their parents watch them die,
Who can’t find any bread to steal,
Who don’t have any rooms to clean up,
Whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s refrigerator,
And whose monsters are very, very real.
We pray for children who spend all their pocket money before Tuesday,
Who throw tantrums in the supermarket
and pick at their food,
Who like ghost stories,
Who hide dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the bath,
Who get visits from the tooth fairy,
Who don’t like to be kissed outside school,
Who squirm in church and yell down the phone,
Whose tears we sometimes laugh at, and whose smiles can make us cry.
And we pray for those, whose nightmares come in the daytime,
Who will eat anything their hands can find,
Who have never seen a dentist,
Who aren’t spoiled by anybody,
Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
Who live and move, but have no being.
We pray for children who want to be carried, and for those who must,
For children we do not allow to be born, and for those who are born, but not allowed to truly live,
For those we never give up on, and for those who won’t have a second chance,
For those we smother, and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.
We pray for all those children whom Jesus loves, and especially for those who haven’t heard.
All these prayers we offer in the name of Him who came as a little child, and became poor for our sakes,
Our Lord, Jesus Christ,
Amen.
