A longtime chaplain for a healthcare system, R. Wayne Willis has collected prayers left in the chapel of the children’s hospital where he works. He lists thirty of these prayers, then offers some words of insight into their meaning, both for children and for us. What makes the prayers of children unique? “The prayers are remarkably uninhibited,” writes Willis. “Unbound by conventional notions of how prayers should be structured and worded, these children pray freely what they mean. The result is prayer that is unflowery, unedited, unrefined, unvarnished—the kind of prayer not to be heard in a formal Sunday morning church service! Most of the prayers are starkly urgent. Children composed them, not in a classroom, not to satisfy a Sunday school teacher, but in the fiery furnace of a tertiary-care hospital, where stakes—the life and health of a loved one—couldn’t be higher.” Some of the prayers include: “Thank you, Lord, for not letting it be any worst. I love you”; “Please be with grandma even though she’s a Jova’s [sic] Witness (cause we still love her). She is still one of your children”; “My mom is die. Why, Do God love me, I call lord for help but she die”; “Dear God, Thank You for letting me live and keeping me alive. P.S. Can You Fly?’ To complement his writing, the author brings in quotations from Ghandi, Dickinson, Mother Theresa, Rilke, and the Scriptures.
Westminster John Knox Press.
