Worst… Prayer… Ever
“Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
I got to hear that prayer every night of my childhood, even when it was the babysitter putting me down. “Why were they doing this to me?”, I wondered. As if life itself wasn’t scary enough, every night I had to be reminded that it was — apparently — entirely possible that I would die in my sleep.
In retrospect, I have to wonder why dying seemed like such a bad idea at the time. My life was no picnic.
Still…
“… if I should die before I wake,” is no concept that your average five-year-old wants to confront just before the lights are turned out and the boogie man becomes a real issue.
But now… at 75? In a world gone mad with self-destruction? I’m thinking that all that damn prayer needs is a slightly different ending.
Try this on for size:
Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray (insert appropriate god or alternate choice here) my soul to take.
If I should die before I wake,
THANK YOU very much!
Just sayin’.
