Searching for the Existence of God in the Fifth Grade, part 3 of 3

“Why are we praying about it?" Or really just, "Why do we pray?”

I pointed out that they are surrounded by prayer. In each chapel, we say or hear at least three prayers. Every day at lunch, we say a blessing, a type of prayer. Even at the inauguration, they heard two rather lengthy prayers. What’s this all about? Why do we pray?

Several kids said we pray to remind ourselves. I like that, and there’s definitely some truth to it. But I’m not satisfied with stopping there, because that means we’re praying to ourselves. I’ve begun to realize that’s how most people look at prayer, but the dictionary I used—not a Christian dictionary, either—says prayers are addressed to deities.

The Hindu girl said when we pray, we are asking for forgiveness. I liked that, and pointed out that Rick Warren did this in his invocation, saying “Forgive us for only thinking of ourselves.” She said we’re also “giving thanks for what we do have.”

I appreciated those thoughts, but grew disheartened in realizing from all the thoughts that were shared so far that ‘God’ was not even in their vocabulary. Who is the one forgiving us? Who are we thanking?

So I asked them: “The prayer says, ‘Give us a true desire to serve one another.’ Who’s doing the giving? We’re asking someone to give this to us—who will give it?”

They didn’t understand the question. (Or maybe they did.) Several kids enthusiastically responded, “We are! We’re doing the giving!”

I asked more directly, “Who do we pray to? Who are we talking to when we pray?”

Finally, a student chimed in, “We’re asking God to help people who are less fortunate.”

Yes—we’re asking God. Progress. But this particular prayer isn’t asking God to help the poor. What is it asking? Why are we praying it?

I backed up again. Serving others is important: agreed. But what usually happens? As the one girl pointed out, people don’t do it. I asked if students naturally want to serve others, if it’s the first thing on their minds. They quickly agreed it wasn’t. Wow! “Who are we usually thinking of?” Again, several responded by saying, “Ourselves.” Again, I’m a bit surprised. How telling! What honesty! What insight!

Finally, the dots were being connected. Serving’s important, but we don’t do it, so why do pray? Because we need help. From who? God. For what?

The Jewish girl summed it up beautifully. “We’re not praying for God to help us serve. We’re asking God to give us the desire to serve.” I could tell she had caught on. She continued, “When we do a coat drive, some people might give coats just because they’re told to, or they might give coats just because they want to clean out their closet, and not really because they want to serve. But we should want to serve, really want to actually do it. That’s what we’re asking for.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. So I wrapped up our conversation by saying that the things they learn in chapel are the most important things they’ll learn at our school, so it concerns me when they complain or tune out. It will shape who they are, the type of people they’ll become, and that is infinitely more important than learning the three ways to write ratios or how to spell words like ostentatious.