prayer

I was playing basketball in the driveway with my 7 year old yesterday. He surprised me by praying before he shot. I have no idea where he picked this up. He doesn’t watch professional sports on TV (he much prefers cartoons) so he hasn’t seen players praying before a game or bowing their heads after scoring a touchdown. But he seems to have caught the notion that God is all-powerful and therefore can help him make a shot if he asks in the proper way.

My first instinct was to point out the logical conflict: what if the person you’re playing against is praying that you won’t make the shot? So does God really care if you make a shot? In the grander scheme of things, how much does it matter that a basketball goes through a hoop or not?

But now I’m thinking that maybe it’s wrong for me to assign my own values to my 7 year old’s world. For him, it does matter if the basketball goes through the hoop. And because it matters to him, it matters to God. Jesus told us that even the sparrows matter to God, and so he takes care of them (Matthew 6:25). Jesus went on to tell us not to worry because we matter so much more to God than the sparrows.

How God juggles all of this is an inscrutable mystery. Somehow he is able to pay attention to the concerns of sparrows, 7 year olds, and the universe all at the same time. And so it makes sense for Peter to tell us to “cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Or for Paul to write, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6).

By the way, I lost the basketball game. Of course, I let my son win. Or maybe it was answered prayer.