The God Squad: A God Squad discovery … the bedtime prayer
One of the unanticipated purposes of this column over the past several decades has been to point out with love and pride ways that our belief in God and God’s love for us sneaks into our world in unappreciated and often unacknowledged ways.
Recently, our discovery of God winks has awakened us to the often spooky discovery of ways that our loved ones have invented to contact us from the other side and thus remind us that death is not the end of us and that we will not be separated forever from those we love.
Our most recent discovery in the land of unexamined spirituality is the tender collection we have assembled of bedtime prayers. We began with the fearful undertone of the most famous “Now I lay me down to sleep…” with its scary warning, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” From there we encountered several comforting modifications and we discovered that praying to God before falling asleep is not just a childhood habit. Many of us make sure that the rhythms of our life include at least one daily moment when we explicitly and expressly let God in. Thank you, dear readers, for being the willing source for our discovery of God in our world and in our lives. The mission of the God Squad lives in you.
Here are some more touching twilight theophanies…
Q: I do so enjoy your weekly column and have been meaning to send another nighttime prayer my great-aunt taught me and I relayed it to my children and grandchildren:
There are four corners on my bed,
There are four angels overhead
Matthew, Mark Luke and John
God bless the bed that I lay on.
Amen -- (From P)
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