What the boy said about his father

"Far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you." — 1 Samuel 12:23

I was thinking this morning about something one of the boys in my class said back in the spring, before school let out for the summer. We were talking about prayer, the way I talk to them about it, which is to say plainly and without expecting them to understand all of it. I had asked them who they pray for, and most of them said what you would expect them to say. Their mothers. Their grandmothers. Their dogs.

But this one boy, the quiet one who sits in the back of the circle and does not say much unless he has decided he means it, he said he prays for his father. And I said that is a good thing to pray for. And he said no, you do not understand, Miss Ruby. I do not pray for my father the way you mean. I pray for him because he does not know how to pray for himself, and somebody has to.

I have been carrying that around for three weeks.

There are people in this world who carry other people's prayers for them without being asked. Children do this. They see the places where the adults in their lives have stopped being able to reach, and they reach there quietly, and they do not tell anyone they are doing it, and the adults go on not knowing that someone has been holding them up from underneath.

I do not know what that boy's father is carrying. I do not know the man. But I know the boy, and the boy has decided that his father needs to be prayed for in a particular way, and the boy is doing it, and the boy is eight years old, and he is doing the work that half the adults I know have not figured out how to do, which is to love someone by doing the thing they cannot do for themselves.

I added him to my list. Not the boy. The father. Because the boy asked me to without saying the words.

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