I remember when I was just a boy; my mother would come into my room to put me to bed each night. She wood squat down on her knees with me on my knees beside her, place her hands together and say the simple prayer, “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.” Then she would put me into bed and “tuck me in,” kissing me on the forehead and wishing me sweet dreams. I remember the feeling of being truly loved at these times more than any that I can recall. I was in the 5th grade when they passed laws prohibiting prayer in school, but before that time I had grown accustomed to and rather enjoyed the daily devotional that was read and prayed over the loudspeaker at school each morning. After the prayer, we all stood beside our desks, placed our hands over our hearts, and pledged allegiance to the flag of our great nation. Thinking back, I missed these morning devotionals when they were gone, and it didn’t take long for the “moment of silence” that replaced our morning prayer to be eliminated as well. After moving on to middle school pledging allegiance evaporated as well, leaving us with an “empty space” in our hearts that nothing seemed to fill. After I had grown into a teenager I got out of the habit of kneeling beside my bed, but I still said my nightly prayers- no matter how selfish or maybe childish they were- they were still part of my nightly routine. I wandered away from God through my late teens and early twenties, as many of us did, only to return and find my Jesus waiting for his prodigal son to return. He forgave me for leaving, and has been feeding me from the fattened calf ever since. Through thick and thin, He has been there all the while, listening to me when I said my daily prayers. When I was raising my children, which are all grown now and having children of their own, I remember kneeling with them by their beds and saying the same old prayer. I am guilty of not always remembering to say grace before our family meals, but it filled my heart to hear one of my four say “daddy, aren’t we going to say the blessing.” I wonder how many parents take the time to kneel beside their little ones and teach them to pray before going to bed each night. It makes you wonder what this world that we live in will look like when this next generation reaches adulthood and doesn’t even know how to communicate with their maker. Are we being defeated as a nation from “the inside out” as Joseph Stalin once stated that we would, or are we willing to get on our knees and fight? You decide! Maybe we should kneel by our beds with our spouses before going to bed too. Who knows, it might just save a few marriages, and I’m absolutely sure that it would be a good example for our children. It surely couldn’t hurt anything.