A Grown-up Approach — By the Rev. Ted Schroeder
As we age, what we need from prayer—and what prayer needs from us—changes.

Kneeling at their beds, my granddaughters still say that old, familiar bedtime prayer, the one you probably learned as a child: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to take. And this I ask for Jesus’ sake. Amen.” They have updated the last line to: “May angels watch me through the night and wake me with the morning light.”

It’s a lovely little prayer, just right for a child’s bedtime. It asks for the small things that are important to children. After all, when you’re young, what could be more important than being kept safe—especially when you don’t know for sure what’s under the bed or in that dark closet? Even today, that gentle prayer brings a kind of peace to my spirit.

When I wearily fall into bed at night, it’s so easy to hark back to comfortable, childhood prayers. Certainly there is nothing wrong with them. But maybe now, as my hair continues to gray and the concerns of the day go far beyond what might lurk under the bed, I need to do more than rehearse those simple lines.

St. Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways” (1 Corinthians 13:11). Perhaps Paul is telling us that it’s time to move beyond gentle prayers. Maybe now, when terrorists darken our future and the world cries out for hope, pleading for God’s people to make a difference—maybe it’s the right time for all of us to pray prayers more like this one:

Lord, we come into your presence seeking a gracious blessing. But we dare to ask for an outrageous portion of Your grace. We ask that You not simply equip us, but that You chase us out into Your world.

Make us people of vision who look not in but out, not backward but forward, not down but up, not at what cannot be done but at what might be accomplished by Your Spirit.

Make us those who seek mountains and not valleys, narrow paths instead of wide and easy ways, sending us new places instead of resting places, starts instead of finishes, horizons instead of waysides, tomorrows instead of yesterdays.

Give us running shoes instead of slippers, alarm clocks instead of sleep switches, accelerators instead of brakes, sailboats instead of sandcastles.

Make us startle even ourselves with the power that You give. For all we do is moved by Your breath, enveloped by Your spirit, filled with the wind of Your grace, and resounding to Your glory and not ours.

“Give us wings to fly like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31). We pray in Jesus’ name.

But then again, perhaps we wouldn’t want to say a prayer like that. After all, what if God answered with a mighty “YES”? Then where would we be? Would we be ready?

The Rev. Ted Schroeder is a Thrivent Financial member and regular contributor to Thrivent magazine.

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. —Isaiah 40:31