Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Last night I tossed about for a long time. Sometime close to morning I recalled that classic 18th century prayer I learned as a child and later taught to my own children. Almost everyone knows some version of it:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

A Wikipedia article relates the many ways in which versions of this prayer have been used in the entertainment media. For instance, It appears in the horror film Nightmare on Elm Street, spoken by Heather Langenkamp's character Nancy before sleeping and encountering Freddy Krueger.

That's how I've come to think about the prayer. It's filled with all sorts of frightening implications. Why did I ever teach my children to pray "And if I DIE before I wake"? What a way to send a child into calm and restful sleep! Whoever thought up such a prayer and why teach it to children? No one seems to know. However it is used again and again to speak about the dangers children face in a world marked with suffering and death. UN Special Representative Mary Fisher used it in a speech to some 2,000 participants in the “Global Summit on AIDS on the Church” sponsored by Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, CA. She said,

"No crisis in history has produced so much opportunity for people of wealth, knowledge and power to find purpose, meaning and satisfaction in life. The church is the ideal bridge from here to there, from safety to satisfaction. Is each human being, indeed, a child of God? Do you believe that with pilgrim-like faith? If so, you will know that the global epidemic is not a mass of numbers, not a ledger of the dead and dying, not one story of tens of millions of people -- but tens of millions of stories told one soul-filled person at a time.

“Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep….”

One by one, they kneel and pray, orphans at their bedsides at Mother Teresa’s on the edge of Lusaka, Zambia. One by one they call back words from our childhoods, calling us to nurture our souls for God’s safekeeping during sleep. My soul ached, and was filled, when I lifted two-year-old Martin to my breast last month in Zambia: a skeleton of a child, his face all eyes and eyelashes – I knew, then, that it was love that nourishes the soul. Holding Martin, I see Bupe, the fragile child I held years earlier who died before I could adopt him. And I finish the childhood prayer:

“If I should die before I wake,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take."



Perhaps that is more to the point. What concern do we have for children at risk, both physically and spiritually, in our neighborhoods? What are we doing about it individually and as gathered congregations of Christians? The poignant picture of Jesus holding the children stands ever before us. We who are as His children are also His arms and hands reaching out to the children facing death before waking.

"Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them.
Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there" (Matthew 19:13-15).