One thing people commented on regarding my husband, Bill, after his death in 2020 was about Bill’s quick and seemingly comfortable practice of praying with others…..
Proverbs 22:6
“Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.”
I attribute that to his mother’s diligence in teaching him to pray as a child. The small candle holder seen here was a gift from Bill to his Mother when he was a young child. Not long ago Bill had told me that she taught him the Lord’s Prayer before he started school.. As he recalled, she sat on his bed with him at night and spoke the words of the prayer, with him repeating them, over and over. until he had memorized it. And she would pray it with him at night until she was comfortable that he knew it well. This pierced plate with the Lord’s Prayer printed in gold was a wedding gift to my maternal grandparents, Howard and Ludie Bell Greene, from his sister, Mildred (“Aunt Mimi”). Each of these reminders of prayer in our lives became treasures in our home after the death of his mother and my grandmother.
When I met Bill he was not comfortable praying in front of others. After his Emmaus Walk at Blue Lake Camp in 1993 and after working many of them, often in the prayer chapel, he became quite comfortable praying aloud, with and for others. It was not uncommon for him to awake in the night and get out of bed, spending the time in prayer, before going back to sleep. A few years ago his Thursday morning men’s prayer and study accountability group studied “Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer : How to Call Heaven to Earth” by Bahamian evangelist Dr. Myles Munroe (4/20/54 – 11/9/2014). It must have been late in 2014 because Dr. Munroe and his wife had just recently died in a plane crash when a small plane carrying them and several other people hit a crane at the Grand Bahama airport in route to a conference. He handed me his copy after they had finished and said, “I think you would like this. It is a powerful book on prayer.” I have since shared his recommendation to several others.
I am grateful for Bill’s attentiveness to prayer through the years. Prayer sustained us through many times. Bill often exemplified and represented Christ to me as we prayed. One of the last things my sister and I did was pray the Lord’s Prayer aloud as we leaned over him in the ICU.