Pray Without Ceasing?

In the most literal sense of the verse, my little Hope is grabbing hold of prayer before she even knows what it means. Every morning when I drop Hope off at mom and dad's we eat breakfast together, and we always pray before the meal. One morning we forgot to pray (gasp!) and mom made a big deal about it with Hope. Hope caught on quickly because she loves to fold her hands and pray before each meal.

A few days later, Dave and Hope and I had just sat down to dinner when all of a sudden she starts whining (almost yelling) to get our attention. I look over and she has her hands folded and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt she is saying, "Hey, we gotta pray Mommy. We gotta pray Daddy." And so we prayed. I think four times. We thanked Jesus for our food and for our family and as always we said, "Amen." (Which, when Hope says it, sounds like Emmie - her cousin's name).

Since then, I find Hope folding her hands and telling me we need to pray at all sorts of times of the day. The other day we prayed in the middle of reading a story and thanked Jesus for books. We prayed while mommy was going pee-pee in the potty and thanked Jesus for toilets (yes, thank you Jesus). And of course, we always pray at the end of the day and thank Jesus for getting us through it (and that Hope would sleep through the night).

I captured this shot the other day during one of those moments she wanted to pray. We were watching Imagination Movers at the time. Thank you Jesus for Playhouse Disney.

Who knew my little one would grab on to prayer this early in life? I realize she has no idea what it's really about yet - she just thinks it's fun to fold her hands and say Jesus. (Which, when Hope says it, sounds like Gigi - her grandma's name).

Perhaps we can take a few ques from my naive 16 month old. Praying should be fun, it should be exciting and it should come naturally to every one of us. God forgive me for not stopping to thank you for every little thing, every minute of every day.