A Special Prayer

A Prayer for the Children

We pray for children who sneak candy before supper, who erase holes in workbooks, who love to be tickled and who can never find their shoes in the morning.

And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who haven't tasted ice cream, who are born in places we wouldn't be caught dead in, and they are, who never go to the circus and who live in an x-rated world.

And we pray for those who never get dessert, who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents suffer, who can't find any bread to steal, who don't have any rooms to clean up, whose pictures are on milk cartons instead of on dressers and whose monsters are real.

We pray for children who spend all their allowance by Tuesday, who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food, who like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under their bed, and never rinse out the tub, who love visits from the tooth fairy even after they find out who it really is, who don't like to be kissed in front of the school bus, who squirm and cry during services and wonder where G-d is, whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

We pray for the children who want to be carried and for those that must, for those we never give up on and for those who don't get another chance.

We pray for those children all over the world that they may have more of a future now, and we also pray for those we smother and spoil, for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it and for those who find no hand to grab.

For all these children, we pray today, for thay are all precious and special, each and every one of them.