Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep. . .

Did you ever have bedtime prayers? What were yours? I remember our meal time prayer. It went like this, Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let this food to us be blessed.

Of course a small, small child may have some difficulty with some of those words. My prayer came out something more like this: Com'lar Jesus. . . I always wondered what Com'lar meant. I assumed it was some deep theological term that I would understand someday. I just knew I was supposed to pray it.

Our night time prayers were different. 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.

The picture above is of Marines in my son's company. Since I don't know if I can say where they are in this format, I won't. However, you can tell from the picture that they are in a place where it is best to sleep with you rifle close at hand. We rattle off our prayers with little thought. Very few, if any of us, really expected to die in our sleep that night. We simply said the words because our parents told us to say them. These guys say them for real!

I good friend of Walt's was killed back in July. He made it home in time for his parents to see him and speak to him. He stepped on an IED and had his legs blown off. It was the shrapnel and infection from all the debris blasted into the wound that finally killed him. It is a hard thing to lose someone close to you. It hit most of the company hard. I do not know the family, but I am quite sure it hit them much harder.

Even Marines in combat get some time off. Walt tends to spend some of his in the gym where he prays for the family of his friend whenever the friend comes to mind. He prays for comfort for them. He prays that there grief would be lifted. He prays that God would give them peace. I don't want to over spiritualize this prayer, but I certainly don't want to minimize it either.

A few days after Walt prayed his most recent prayer, one of his fellow sergeants called 3-4 of the guys who knew this young man best together to tell them of a dream he had. He saw this small group in a waiting room, anxiously waiting to see their friend. Everyone else finally fell asleep. At that point, the young man walked in wearing a white shirt and a white baseball cap. He told the sergeant still awake to tell everyone not to worry, to take care of one another, and to tell them he was fine. The comfort for the family was delivered first to his fellow Marines.

Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. AMEN.