A Prayer For Children

Loving God, you have created us for life together and placed in our midst the you who are symbols of both hope and vulnerability. Hear our prayers for all the children: to sustain their hope and joy and youth, to comfort and console them. Hear us as we pray for that precious gift of life.

We pray for children
	who put chocolate fingers everywhere, who like to be tickled, who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants, who sneak Popsicles before supper, who erase holes in math workbooks, who can never find their shoes.

We pray for those
	who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who never "counted potatoes," who are born in places that most of us wouldn’t be caught dead in, who never go to the circus, who live in an x-rated world.

We pray for children
	who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who sleep with the dog and bury goldfish, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money, who cover themselves with Band-Aids and who sing off-key, who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink, who slurp the soup.

We pray for those
	who never get dessert, who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents watch them die, who can’t find any bread to steal, who don’t have any rooms to clean up, whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser, whose monsters are real.

We pray for children
	who spend all their allowances before Tuesday, pick at their food, who throw tantrums in the grocery store, who like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under the bed, and never rinse out the tub, who get visits from the tooth fairy, who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool, who squirm in church, whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray
	for those whose nightmares come in the daytime, who will eat anything, who have never seen a dentist, who aren’t spoiled by anybody, who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, who live and move but have no being.

We pray for children
	who want to be carried, and for those who must, for those we never give up on, and for those who don’t get a second chance, for those we smother with love and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.

We pray for our children, for your children, for childhood’s dreams and nightmares. In each child let us behold anew your promise of the creation. Sustain these little and not-so-little ones. By your grace may they live in the lives for which they were created.