1m2aSandbox

We started our Matthew 25/Good Deeds jars over the weekend: every day in December the girls draw a slip of paper from their own jar, and they do whatever that piece of paper instructs for the day. It’ll be something like “write a thank-you note to your teacher” or “tell a friend what you like about her” – simple stuff, but all things that encourage you to love on someone else. At the end of the day each girl will put her piece of paper in a box wrapped like a Christmas present with an opening at the top, and at the end of December we put the box under our tree as our gift to Jesus – all the ways we’ve loved him by loving others this month. The girls look forward to it every year and I confess I enjoy it too.

So on Sunday Cora drew “pray for a stranger” and her brow wrinkled up. “Mommy, how can I pray for someone if I don’t even know them? How do I know what to say?”

“Well,” I said, “Think about the people we already pray for that we don’t know – a relative of a friend, who might be sick; or people in New York after hurricane Sandy hit. That sort of thing.” I started brainstorming.

“You could pray for the children in Africa who don’t have enough to eat, or you could pray for the kids at our homeless shelter who don’t have a place to sleep at night. Or-“

Cora cut me off, holding up one hand confidently. “Ok, I got this.” And she walked into the living room, lay down on her back on the couch, and gazed at the ceiling, hands behind her head. Though she was silent, Cora’s hands started moving like she was having a conversation, a rather disconcerting effect to an obsever.

A few moments later she got off the couch. “Done!” she said cheerily. “We talk best on the couch, you know. That’s how me and God work it out.” And she dropped her paper in the gift box and walked off.

I love that she’s not embarrassed to pray in front of people, and that she’s completely unselfconscious about how and where she does it. I found myself eyeing the couch speculatively the rest of the day . . . maybe she’s got a personal line plugged in there?