Pray for Jerusalem

This morning my 5 year old daughter commented to her dad as he woke; 'Did you know a lady was killed in Jerusalem as they put a bomb there and 30 people were also hurt. Dad said 'well we can pray for them.' Her reply; 'we did that already and last night we prayed from Egypt because they haven't got much freedom.'

These questions began 23rd March when my daughter was near the computer watching me read the news. She wanted to get on there to play some games. She is 5 years old but an early reader and was able to read the news about the bombing. At first I tried to quickly change the page, but she insisted she was reading that page and asked 'what does it mean there a bomb in a bus station?'

I did my best to explain some basic things, but felt tentative  to make sure I didn't tell her too much or too little now her interest was keen. She is very literal so I needed to be careful.

To explain I simply said 'sometimes instead of talking about things and praying for change, people use guns and bombs and fight to change things. So this is what happened here.' She instantly thought that was 'silly' and that we pray for them. I was so excited at her response!

She suggested we pray first for the dead lady and the 30 wounded people, so in her prayer she asked that 'Jesus made the woman alive again, and helped the people who were hurt to get better quickly.'

It was interesting today to discover that the lady (Mary Gardener) who was killed in the bombing, was actually a christian believer and a Wycliffe bible translator who lived in Togo in West Africa. She was in Jerusalem to study Hebrew in order to translate the New Testament into the Togo language-(see link Guardian.co.uk ). That is the amazing thing, we also prayed for the family of the lady who died (my input) that they would know Jesus peace. It is now 2nd April and she is still very insistent we must pray for Jerusalem.



I now have a few countries on an immediate prayer card, Ivory Coast, Libya, Japan/Burma, Egypt/Syria, Israel, USA, UK to have focused prayer at the moment. Last night she asked me why are you praying for these places. I was able to give her a brief run down.

So this morning was quite a lovely thing, to hear her wake her dad and tell him about the countries on the prayer card she saw by our bed.

My Thought for today:

Lord; Lets us never under estimate the understanding and discernment you give children, let us encourage them to take responsibility for the world we live in, especially through the power of prayer.