A Little Girl’s Alphabet Prayer
A father walked by his daughter’s bedroom door which was cracked just enough so that he could see that she was kneeling beside her bed in prayer. Interested to find out what subjects a child would bring before God, he paused and listened. He was puzzled though to hear her reciting the alphabet: "A, B, C, D, E, F, G …" She just kept repeating it. He didn’t want to interrupt her, but soon curiosity got the best of him and he broke into her prayer. "Honey," he asked, "what are you doing?" "I’m praying, Daddy," she replied. "Well, why are you praying the alphabet?" he asked. She explained, "I started my prayers, but I wasn’t sure what to pray. So I decided to just say all the letters of the alphabet and let God put them together however He thinks best."
Have you ever felt that way? You knew you needed to pray, but just weren’t sure how. You didn’t know the right words. You didn’t know what was acceptable to God. In the Luke account, the disciples said to Jesus “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1)
From a sermon by Stephen Sheane, The Lord’s Prayer, 2/26/2010