A Prayer For Children

We pray for children who put chocolate fingers

everywhere, who like to be tickled, who stomp in

puddles and ruin their pants, who sneak Popsicles

before supper, who erase holes in math workbooks,

who can never find their shoes.

And we pray for those who stare at photographs from

behind barbed wire, who can't bound in the street in a new

pair of sneakers, who never go to the circus, who live

in an X-rated world.

Starving children in North Korea

We pray for children who bring us sticky kisses and

fistfuls of dandelions, who sleep with the dog and bury the

goldfish, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money,

who cover themselves in band-Aids and sing off-key, who

squeeze toothpaste all over the sink, who slurp their soup.

And we pray for those who never get dessert,

who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,

who watch their parents watch them die, who can't

find any bread to steal, who don't have any rooms to

clean up, whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,

whose monsters are real.

A Christian victim of ISIS

We pray for children who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,

who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food, who

like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never

rinse the tub, who get visits from the tooth fairy, who don't like to

be kissed in front of the carpool, who squirm in church and scream

in the phone, whose tears we sometimes laugh at, whose smiles

can make us cry.

We pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime,

who will eat anything, who aren't spoiled by anybody, who

go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, and who live

and move but have no being.

More than half of American Indian children in the 

United States of America grow up in extreme poverty on reservation lands.

We pray for children who want to be carried and

for those who must, for those we never give up on, and

for those who don't get a second chance. For those we smother...

and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind

enough to offer it.

Child refugees in the South Sudan

Bless the beasts and the children

For in this world they have no voice,

They have no choice.

Bless the beasts and the children,

For the world can never be

The world they see.

Light their way

When the darkness surrounds them;

Give them love, let it shine all around them.

Bless the beasts and the children;

Give them shelter from a storm;

Keep them safe

Keep them warm.

Light their way

When the darkness surrounds them;

Give them love, let it shine all around them.

Bless the beasts and the children;

Give them shelter from a storm;

Keep them safe;

Keep them warm.

Bless the beasts and the children

Give them shelter from a storm;

Keep them safe;

Keep them warm.

Bless The Beasts And The Children

The Carpenters

"A Prayer For Children"

By Ina J. Hughes

"Bless The Beast And The Children"

Barry De Vorzon/ Peter L.Botkin

(1971)