The Perfect Peter Pan!

My soul yearns for you in the night;

in the morning my spirit longs for you.

When your judgments come upon the earth,

the people of the world learn righteousness.

Though grace is shown to the wicked,

they do not learn righteousness;

even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil

and regard not the majesty of the LORD.

Isaiah 26:9-10

This classic 18th century children’s prayer was printed in the New England Primer and was still well known and being quoted regularly as late as the 1950’s.

“Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

To be perfectly honest as a child this prayer upset me. I was not excited about thinking about dying every time I went to bed for the night! So I was happy when I was old enough to compose my own prayer each night and could leave out the part about dying.

Now that I am an old man that is exactly what I think about every night when I go to bed. The thoughts are not about what I am going to miss here on earth after I die. The thoughts are about what am I going to see, hear, touch and experience in Heaven when I leave this earth! As I drift off to sleep I sometimes think about the crowd of worshippers gathered before the throne. On this earth I have seen the Glory of His creation and daily see His beautiful murals of nature. In Heaven I will bow before the artist Himself and see the Glory of God who is the source of all that is beautiful! I will stand beyond the sands of time itself and will know the answers to questions which have never even entered my mind here on the earth.

When I woke up as a small child I would often run and jump in bed with my parents. Wrestling with my father in the morning was the greatest game on earth and gave me a firm sense of “ALL IS WELL.”

When I wake up now the first thing I want to do is to hear from God. He has been awake and keeping watch over me in the night. I want to hear from Him how things are going before anything else. Sometimes I even wrestle with Him about something! It gives the same sense that “ALL IS WELL.”

As a child, if my father was angry at me all was not well. Nothing in life mattered until my father and I were back on good terms and there was peace between us. I feared nothing more than displeasing my father.

As an old man I fear nothing more than displeasing God. I am still a little boy when it comes to God. So I am reminded again today that no matter how long I live on this earth God is still my Father and I am His child! In a very good sense I am the perfect Peter Pan!