A Lesson About Prayer

This was my first writing ever published. It was in the Church of God Evangel - 1984?

It was a warm, sunny day. My three-year-old son, Joey, was happily playing with his toy trucks in the park. I was sitting next to him in the sand, reading the latest issue of a theological journal. Totally immersed in an article, I didn't notice when they arrived. Two little girls, about seven or eight years old, were having a wonderful time playing house . They were "cooking" all sorts of delicious entrees. The specialty of the house was mud pies. Then one of the girls decided she was going to bake a cake for Jesus. The other girl agreed that it was a good idea and joined her. Taking great care to pack their mud pies carefully in a circular mold, they presented these to Jesus. The twosome started yelling up to the sky, "Jesus, here's Your pie! Don'tcha wanna eat it?"

This brought no response, so they climbed to the top of the slide, threw their mud pies straight toward heaven, and shouted to the top of their little girl lungs, "Hey, Jesus don'tcha what Your pie?" This turned out to be great fun , so they kept it up for several minutes. I was reading a very interesting article, but it couldn't even compare to the present performance. My son, holding his ears and dodging mud pies, decided to play a little further away. These girls obviously had just enough Sunday school to be dangerous. One of the girls paused, her arms hanging wearily at her side. With a puzzled look on her face, she asked her blond-haired playmate, "Why don't He like our pies?" "Maybe He can't hear us," replied her friend. So they screamed even louder. I was certain that volume

was not the problem. Then the blond-haired girl suddenly stopped and said, "I know why He can't hear us. He's dead." The other child answered with, "Oh, I see," and an affirmative nod of the pigtails. This was too much for me. "Oh, He's not dead," I said to them. "He rose from the dead and is very much alive. I just don't think He's too hungry right now." They looked at me, shrugged their tiny shoulders, and decided the swings were much "funner" anyway. I sat down on the grass and laughed. "What rotten theology!" I said to myself. "To think that Jesus would be interested in dirt thrown up in the air! " It was then that the Holy Spirit said to me, "Is your prayer life any better?" I don't take magazines to the park anymore. There's too much to learn.