Hannah's First Prayer

My other DD is back!

But I am going to post some of my favorite entries here for safety.




24 Jan 2000 - Hannah's First Prayer


I wrote this awhile back. It is true. I though you might like it.


Tenderhearted is one of the first things I think when I think of Hannah. She has always been protective of her little brothers, if they were sad she would cry with them. And she was never happier than when she was playing with animals, especially baby animals. She always seemed to know how to be gentle with them. In most cases the animals didn’t seem to be afraid of her.




We have always tried to teach the children to pray, and to know that God hears them. Hannah said her prayers every night. “God bless Mommy and Daddy. God bless Jordy and Jamison. Help me be a good girl…” Fortunately we were blessed, so Hannah had never known a crisis. Unfortunately she had never witnessed a tangible, direct answer to prayer. As adults we know, or rather we should know that God answers every prayer. His answers being, “yes” sometimes, “no” sometimes and the hardest “wait”. But as a small child it is hard to relate a prayer to an answer that may come days or weeks after the fact.



Not to imply that Hannah didn’t have faith, she has that sweet, beautiful, childlike, faith that Jesus referred to in the Gospels.


So when baby bird fell out of it’s nest and landed on our sidewalk, after her initial sadness that a little animal had fallen, she prayed for God to save the little bird. She had absolutely no doubt that He would, it was just a matter of time, and she intended to be there to see it. She was not quite 4 at this time. So I assumed she would lose interest, and forget about it. But she didn’t lose interest.



I guess it is hard to get bored when you know, no question about it, that a miracle is about to happen. She watched and waited for several hours. I was becoming concerned. I didn’t want the answer to her first real prayer to be no. I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I take the baby bird in and try to feed it? Should I have a talk with Hannah and explain “the laws of the jungle”? So I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do I called Calvin. I explained to him what had happened and how I thought it would crush Hannah to have that little bird die. He said for me to tell her that she might be scaring the mommy bird off by sitting there, and that it might be better if she came in the house for awhile. He said to me that with all the cats in our neighborhood that the little bird would be gone soon. Hannah could just imagine that the mommy bird had come and carried it home.



I felt bad. It wasn’t a lie really, but it wasn’t the truth either. I called her in. She was fine with that, she even mentioned how she had prayed to God for the mommy bird to come and take care of the baby bird. Now I knew that it had been several hours and that the mommy bird wasn’t coming back, and even if she did what could she do. She couldn’t carry the baby back to the nest. So that bird was cat food, no two ways about it.




Hannah waited inside, checking on the bird periodically. The third time out the bird was gone. She called out to me. I went out there planning on giving her the impression that I thought the mommy was taking care of the baby. Although I knew it had been carried off by a hungry cat. Before I could open my mouth, Hannah started telling me what was going on. The mommy bird had come back, and somehow moved the baby to the bushes. And was feeding it. We watched her fly off to get food and swoop back down and feed the baby, and head out and do it again. I was amazed and excited. I couldn’t believe it!



Hannah just looked at me with a bemused expression and said “Mommy I prayed about it. What did you think would happen?” I guess I got the lesson in faith that day. Also another lesson akin to what Jesus had said about God’s eye being on the sparrow, if God cared enough about a little 3 year girl’s prayer about a baby bird, how much more he was listening to us when we pray about bigger things. His eye is on the sparrow, but more importantly His eye was on Hannah’s heart and her childlike faith.