Honesty

Honesty guides good people…Proverbs 11:3

There is nothing like April fool’s day in first grade. It’s one of those days you just wish to be over as quickly as possible because it’s an ongoing assortment of “tales” told by some of the most honest people on earth; little kids are so lousy at lying!  One of the things I love most about the little lovelies is their honesty, even if they do try to fib, it’s usually as clear as a bell.  One little girl made nearly a dozen attempts to “April fools” me and she just couldn’t understand why I never fell for it; I told her it had a lot to do with the giant grin on her face each time she came to talk to me!

Along with all the crazy April fool’s day stuff, the kids were busy finishing up their prayer writing lessons.  We keep thing pretty simple in first grade so we teach them to write Praise, Thanksgiving and Petition prayers.  The sincerity and honesty of their prayers touchs my heart.  One little boy brought his thanksgiving prayer to read and I noticed right away it was very short.  I told him I was surprised his thankful list wasn’t longer than one sentence.  He grinned and read the prayer, “My Owsum God, thank you for everything and everybody I like.” He spent the next 30 seconds trying to convince me that his prayer was smart because he could save time and not have to sit down and write everything one at a time because “I like a lot of stuff and a lot of people so it would take too long to do it your way.”  Honest reply!

Another burst of honest prayer came when a little girl read from her praise prayer the words “My Kool God, You are umazing! It is good the way you made my mom and dad, they are nice but you could have tried harder on my bruther be cuz he is not so nice…” And another still wrote a petition prayer asking God to make her dad please like cats better so she could have lots of them.

The thing that I love about children’s prayers is how honest they are.  As adults we worry about the words and the sentiment too much.  We’re afraid to ask for too much or too little and we very often forget to pray with expectation.  We worry about how we sound in front of everybody including God himself.  He wants the bottom line. He wants to hear all our stuff, the good the bad the frustrated the angry and the amazing. Prayer is our communication with God and He wants it to be honest.   Go ahead and be honest with Him.  Tell Him the crabby neighbor is driving you nuts but then be sure to ask Him for more patience and love.  Go ahead and tell Him what you think He should take special note of in your life but then ask Him to help you see things through His eyes.  Go ahead and let Him know how frustrated you are about suffering and sickness and tragedy but then ask Him how to show His comfort, healing and peace.  He wants to hear it all!

A Seed To Plant:  Take out 3 pieces of paper and write down a prayer of Praise, Thanksgiving and Petition.  Spelling doesn’t count but honesty does!

Blessings on your day!