PARENTING April 19, 2010 Issue

A PRAYER THAT ISN'T BIG OR LITTLE

ANDREA MCCORMICK

GROWING UP, my sister and I used to have two prayer plaques on the wall of our bedroom. Our parents had purchased them in a Christian Science Reading Room and put them on our wall so we could learn the words. Each night we would say them when we went to bed.

These verses were a New Year's gift from Mary Baker Eddy for little children and big children (see Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 400). I was envious of my older sister, who got to say the "Prayer for the Big Children."

I thought "my" prayer, the "Prayer for the Little Children," was not as important or as powerful, because of the world little and because the words were simpler! Little did I know, when I had children of my own, and a grandchild, just how powerful those simple words were to parents and children alike. They go like this:

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