fulness from father one morning after a storm had wiped out virtually everything we had. After he had made the rounds over sodden, wasted crops and counted his loss in the bloated bodies of farm animals, he sat down beside the table. Opening the Bible, he raised his hand in his customary attitude of thanksgiving. For one tense moment we waited. Then we heard his voice, firm and resonant: ‘Fa ther, we thank Thee, that Thou hast seen fit to spare our lives in .this disaster.’ It was a lesson we never forgot.” Our reaction when friends and relatives suffer losses and afflictions, the children will discover. They will know if we pray for our neighbor’s deep need, for Aunt Dorothy when she is ill and for Uncle Harry in the hospital. Our children will soon sense the strength of our dependence on God. Do sorrows shatter our complacency; or do we take them to the Lord in prayer, and know the comfort of the Holy Spirit as He applies scripture to our hearts? Our chil dren will know. Do problems furrow our brows with anxiety and absorb our attention so fully that we overlook all other matters and talk o f little else? Or do we leave our burden with the Lord for Him to work in our minds for the solution we seek? He can bring un expected help from an unlikely quarter. Effective teaching will take many years. Yet nothing is more worthwhile. Mountains o f money or the fullest university training can never be a substitute for learning how to pray. If in black moments you wonder how much your children have learned about prayer, you may get a welcome surprise. One mother was ill. Evading watching eyes and ignoring germs, her son came to her bedside. “ I’ll ask Jesus to make you better,” he said. He then dropped on his knees and prayed for her in the most mature way. “Now I don’t worry,” that mother adds. “ The greatest lesson is being learned—that God is real and loving, cares for the sick and weak; is with us too in our greatest joys, and can be spoken to wherever we are and whatever we are doing.” A parent may fondly hope that his children will learn to pray better than he does. But we cannot teach more than we have experienced. Remem bering this and wanting our children to learn to pray may challenge us to make ourselves more proficient in prayer. Praying was an essential part o f our Lord’s life. It must be equally important in our own and in our children’s lives. True, there is no guaran teed formula a parent can use to insure for his children strong prayerful lives. Yet as he does all he can to guide his children in prayer, he may con fidently look to God to crown his efforts with suc cess. What a joy it is to know that our children are praying with clearer vision and maturing faith! cm THE KING'S BUSINESS
them to pray for others. They can ask God to pro tect and help those whom they know. They can pray for their Church and its pastor; and for the Sunday school with teachers and superintendent. We shall further encourage our children to pray if we inquire for answers to their petitions. If there has been, we can rejoice together. If not, then we can tell them that sometimes God wishes us to keep on praying because a delay does not al ways mean that God has said, “No.” What is more, we shall help our children to pray by answering their questions on their diffi culties in praying. A child can be puzzled because he is talking to someone he cannot see. “ But you and I sometimes talk to each other when we are in different rooms,” may be a helpful answer. If they wonder what God is like, we can explain in the way our Lord did by pointing them to Jesus. “How can God hear more than one person at once?” A good teacher can hear several children reading at the same time and be able to say which one made a mistake. A petition that does not bring a positive re sponse always creates a difficulty. We point out that whatever we ask for, we add “ please.” That is, we want it “ if it pleases You.” Sometimes we ask for what does not please God. Our children can learn to take “no” from us because they believe we have a good reason for refusal. So they will learn to accept “ no” from God, because He has a good reason for refusal. We do not always ask for what is best; we seek to show them. As God is good and kind, He can only give us what will help us, so sometimes He must say “ no” to our petitions. Often the question of unanswered prayer will arise when a wet day comes on an outing. Some times contemporary events will help our explana tion. If the child has planted and later watered some seeds, he will know that rain is necessary. Several rainless days would make the plants very thirsty and they could die from lack o f moisture. Crops need rain. God orders the world so that it is best for everyone, the farmers included. Sometimes crops need rain more urgently than we need a fine day for our outing. We shall try to show them why it is that God answers any petition. Also, that He expects us to say “ thank You” to Him when He gives what is asked o f Him. Further, we shall emphasize that as He is a holy God He expects us to put away our sin by repentance and confession. It is a good plan to get the child to find the verse in the Bible, and to read it. We must teach them to pray in faith and ac cording to God’s will or they will soon meet great discouragements in prayer. If we are spontaneous in thanking God, even when life is serious, our children will know. One woman records: “We learned a lesson o f thank
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