“Child’s Play”
What happens when children talk to God? If missives found in “Children’s Letters to God” are any indication, what we get is a good deal more honesty than we generally hear in prayers offered by adults. Cartoonist Stuart Hample collaborated with Eric Marshall to assemble a collection of kid’s heartfelt communications. The book even inspired a Broadway musical. Here are a few examples:
Dear God: My grandpa says you were around when he was a little boy. How far back do you go? (Dennis)
Dear God: Are you really invisible or is that a trick? (Lucy)
Dear God: Thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy. (Joyce)
Dear God: Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident? (Norma)
Dear God: Please put another holiday between Christmas and Easter. There is nothing good in there now. (Ginny)
Dear God: Please send Dennis Clark to a different camp this year. (Peter)
Dear: God: I bet it is hard for you to love everybody in the whole world. There are only four people in my family and I can never do it. (Nan)
Dear God: Maybe Cain and Able would not kill each other so much if they had their own room. It works for my brother. (Larry)
Dear God: Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don’t you just keep the ones you got now? (Jane)
Dear God: I think about you sometimes even when I’m not praying. (Elliott)
When children communicate with God they tend to be direct. They make their feelings clear. They haven’t yet learned how to be subtle or cynical. Or worst of all religious.
Followers of Jesus have to wrestle with an interesting question that arises on the pages of the New Testament: Is God calling us to be children or grownups?
Jesus famously tells his disciples that unless they become like little children they will never enter the kingdom of God. (Matthew 18:3) But some of the Bible’s authors are quick to point out that it’s time to put childish habits and perspectives behind us. (Ephesians 4:14) The apostle Paul strikes a balance in I Corinthians 14:20: “Brothers and sisters stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in thinking be adults.” Jesus calls us to trust our Heavenly Father the way a child trusts a caring parent. But we are not to be naïve about the fact we live in a world that is committed to squeezing us into its own God-rejecting world.
Are you anxious that your prayers have never advanced beyond what a kid might say? Be very happy. You’re right where the Lord wants you.
Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain