[From the archives]
Maker of all the children –
I pray for those kids gasping for air under parental pressure, educational expectations and the crush of culture.
I pray for the uncoordinated, the uninvited and the seemingly uncooperative. I pray for those slower at soccer drills and times-tables and getting to the tuckshop. I pray for those fraught with the exhaustion of holding steady through long loud days.
I pray for kids suffering from debilitating over-achievement, and for kids – on the dreaded cusp of each new week – diagnosed with chronic Sunday-nightis. I pray for the ADDs and the HIVs and the SNEs and those with the sense of humour no one gets.
Let them come
Because this is written –
People brought babies to Jesus, hoping He might touch them. When the disciples saw it, they shooed them off. Jesus called them back. ‘Let these children alone. Don’t get between them and Me. These children are the Kingdom’s pride and joy.’ (Luke 18:15-17, MSG)
Jesus, You were never too busy for kids – always calling them close.
Call close the fringe kids battling fear, frustration or the bewilderment of abandonment. Please love on them – in ways that translate tangibly into their vast or stifling realities.
Keep them calm
Give these kids a knowing that surpasses cognition and maturity – a knowing that You’re all about preparing them for adventure – not just easing their angst.
As you put them through the rigours of mind and muscle expansion, settle them with the peace that You’re the everywhere God – inside time and outside time at the same time – and You’re leading them into grace spaces where You already are.
Quiet and compose them where homework or gaping holes have left them agitated. Make up the difference. Fill in the blanks of friends, concentration or capacity.
Assure them that You will work out Your plans for their lives – for Your faithful love, O LORD, endures forever. You won’t abandon them, for You made them.
You’re the grace-grip Father who says,
Make them strong
David wrote, ‘As soon as I pray, you answer me; you encourage me by giving me strength.’
Where kids feel glaringly exposed, secure them with the soft-touch truth that they’re hidden beneath Your feathers.
And where kids feel victimized, overlooked or trapped between the rocks and hard places of unchanging circumstances, comfort them: it takes intense heat, pressure and darkness – for the longest time – to make brilliant, unbreakable diamonds.
Set them free
Free these kids from crushing self-consciousness. Make them less and less aware of themselves and their struggles – and more and more aware of others. Even as the iron sets in their spines – allowing them to stand happy and strong – keep them flexible, to bend easily and bless the downcast.
Hard seeds sown now will bear future fruit. But oh God, we each get just one childhood! Fill theirs with joy and an uncomplicated insouciance, multiplied by Your mercy.
For the sake of Your Kingdom, and Your glory,
Amen.
. . .
Have a wonderful, wonder-filled weekend!
I’d love you to share this post. Our kids need us all to be praying, yes?
Check out these YouVersion reading plans:
Walking in Grace by Dalene Reyburn
An Apple a Day by Michael Mol and Dalene Reyburn
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