For Your Library: Little Prayers for Ordinary Days
Little Prayers for Ordinary Days
by Katy Bowser Hutson, Flo Paris Oakes, and Tish Harrison Warren
Illustrated by Liita Forsyth
IVP Kids, 2022
Tish Harrison Warren lives at the center of a million digital storms. And, let’s be honest, she writes terrible, wrong-headed opinion pieces.
She’s also annoying good at talking about prayer.
In “Little Prayers for Ordinary Days,” her new collection of children’s prayers authored with Katy Bowser Hutson and Flo Paris Oakes, though, Warren’s back at her best. Along with her co-authors, both founding members of the sweet children’s folk-gospel band Rain for Roots, this is a little book that does big things.
Take their prayer “For when I break something” — it’s the sort of thing that happens all the time in any life that involves kids, or just being human. In a few simple lines, this prayer articulates remorse, the need for courage, and God’s unceasing love for us that is so much greater than God’s love for anything we could break. And that’s the story over and over again in this collection. It’s overflowing with God’s love.
Another small thing I love about this collection: the clear link between prayer and praise. These are prayers that embrace Anne Lamott’s principle of Help-Thanks-Wow. They ask for God’s help, they appreciate God’s gifts and grace, and they live into our need to praise God’s goodness and the wonder of creation.
So, what about my sense of conflict with one of the authors? It’s complicated! I don’t really know of a lot of other children’s prayer books that avoid trite rhymes or just rehash existing prayers. These are new, accessible but appropriate through middle-to-late childhood, but simple enough to pray with much younger children. And, they contain profound moments where I feel their immense wonder, like in the prayer “For when I look at the stars” –
…In the Bible you said you would
make a family like the stars –
so many people we couldn’t even count them if we tried!
You look at us like we look at the stars –
shining and breathtaking and beloved.
I can feel complicated about one of the authors of this collection while also recognizing that our children are deserving of prayers that so earnestly describe their belovedness and helps us see God’s constant presence, whether we’re brushing our teeth, going to school, having a great day, or having a bad one. We are seen and loved and that love never fails.
