Prayer is the language in which we are called to be ultimately honest with ourselves and with God. It's the place where we are called to set aside all pretense, and all fake politeness, and be nakedly honest. Prayer is the place where the stakes are ultimate . The little things and the big things are all the same size when we bring them to God. Children seem to know that truth better than grown-ups sometimes.
Children always pray about things that matter.
Maybe one of the things that we need to learn to do, is to pray with the honesty and the sincerity of children, and with the experience and the depth of knowledge of adults. What I thought we could do this morning, is to go back to elementary school for a little while. Jesus' friends asked him to give them some instruction in how to pray. Each of the great spiritual teachers has offered some guidance in this area. And Jesus is by far the greatest spiritual teacher of them all.