5 Finger Prayer

Recently we have been trying to teach Grace some ideas on how to pray.  She loves to pray at mealtimes and we have always encouraged her to pray however she wants because we don't want to feed prayers to her.  But this is what her prayers were going like...

"Dear God, thank for bingo bong la la bo bo pop.  Amen."

So, we encouraged her to use real words and this was the result...

"Dear God, thank you for the mission and something and something of you.  Amen."

She also loves to pray for my hands because one of them has been very dry and cracked on the palm since Caleb has been born.  And I will say due to some changes in products I use and her prayers it is getting better.  That prayer goes like this...

"Dear God, please make mommy's hands feel better.  Amen."

Anyway a friend told me she had read about the 5 finger prayer so I Interent searched it and found many many many different forms of that prayer.  Basically you use all the fingers of your hand to remind you to pray for someone or something.  Because Grace is young I wanted to keep it simple and I wanted to teach her to pray for others.  So, I use the model below.

So, we go through each finger of the hand and pray for the people listed as follows...

Thumb (point at self) - Someone close to us who lives in our house
Pointer (point away from self) - Someone far away who lives outside of our house (this likely ends up being the friend/person she saw most recently)
Middle Finger (show that it is the tallest) - Someone in leadership (our pastor, Sunday school teachers, Awana leaders, etc..)
Ring Finger (show that it is weak and can't stand on it's own)- Someone weak or sick (we have prayed for kids who don't have parents and friends we know who are sick)
Pinky (say that it is little just like child you're praying with)- The child you're praying with (This is Grace's favorite and I always pray for her with this one and haven't had her pray yet).

I know ultimately that just plain praying with and for Grace will serve as a model for her.  I often fail in this area though so I'm going to work on the hand model with her.  I might even start using it in my own prayer time:)