Something a child said

"Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." — Matthew 18:3

Church was quieter this morning without the children downstairs. The Sunday school class is done until September, and the fellowship hall was empty when I walked past it, and the circle of chairs was still there from last week, and I did not go in.

I have been thinking about something one of the boys said in class a few weeks ago. We were talking about prayer and I had asked the children what they thought prayer was, which is a question I ask every year because the answers change as they grow, and this boy, who does not say much in class, said that prayer was talking to someone you could not see but who you were pretty sure was listening.

I have thought about that sentence every day since he said it. Pretty sure. Not certain, not confident, not filled with the unshakeable faith that the hymns talk about. Pretty sure. He is ten years old and he has already arrived at the place most people spend their whole lives trying to reach, which is the honest place, the place where you say what you actually believe instead of what you think you are supposed to believe.

I have been pretty sure for most of my life. I have had mornings where the sureness was stronger and mornings where it was weaker and I have sat at the kitchen table on both kinds of mornings and prayed anyway, because the praying is the practice whether the sureness is there or not. But I have never been more than pretty sure, and I think he knew that when he said it, in the way children know things about the adults in their lives that the adults have not said out loud.

The church was full this morning. The sermon was fine. I sat in my pew and I thought about that sentence, and I was pretty sure somebody was listening, and that was enough.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.