This is part one in a series on things I learned from my friends in the Daraja Children’s Choir. You can get an overview and links to all posts here.

I’ve written two books on prayer.

I’ve spoken dozens of times on the subject.

I’ve taught Sunday school classes on prayer and been a part of hundreds of conversations on the topic.

In fact, in Six Prayers God Always Answers, my co-author Mark Herringshaw and I spent a lot of time telling people that there isn’t a right way to pray. You don’t have to say certain words, assume a specific posture, or be in a certain place. But I changed my mind about that this past weekend when my new Kenyan friends taught me that the place where prayer comes from is perhaps the most important aspect of praying.

I like to think I’m okay at prayer. I’m not shy to do it out loud in front of people, quietly at home, or in an email for that matter. But this weekend when the Kevin, Eddy, and Moses, twelve and thirteen year old boys from Kenya prayed, I was humbled by their prayers. And when Dan their chaperone (also from Kenya) prayed I was blown away by the depth of faith demonstrated in their prayers.

Unlike most adult Christians I’ve been around who pretend to tie their shoes when the leader asks, “Who wants to pray?” the boys were always eager to pray aloud. There wasn’t anything shy or intimidating about praying for them. They welcomed the opportunity. When they prayed, they spoke in quiet, hushed, reverential voices. They didn’t pray so that the people at the other end of the table could hear them. If I wanted to hear their prayers I had to still my heart and quiet my body because these boys prayed for an audience of one. Yet somehow those quiet words were more jarring than a plane that suddenly loses altitude.

With little accents that pronounced every consonant and every vowel they would pray, “Thank you, Gawd for the oxygen we breathe.”

For oxygen? I can honestly say, I’ve never thanked God for oxygen.

“Thank you Gawd that we are ali-vuh. We know that to be ali-vuh is a geeft from you.”

Being alive is a gift? And I would think to myself, What have these boys seen in their life that makes them wake up every morning thankful to be ali-vuh? I pray for my health, but usually only when I am sick, occasionally when I am feeling really great, but never just because I’m alive. When is the last time you thanked God for the geeft of your life?

As their prayer continued, they thanked God that they had a shelter for the night. Not, “Thanks for this house with beds and an Xbox 360.” For shelter.  They thanked God for the food on the table but not by saying, “Bless this to the nourishment of our bodies” like I and so many Christians do. Instead they humbly prayed, “Thank you, Gawd that we have food to eat.”

The Sunday lunch prayer really caught my attention. In that prayer, they prayed for the hands that had prepared the meal. This phrasing isn’t unique, I’ve heard others use it as a way of thanking Grandma for making the Christmas ham or as a pseudo-blessing on the church volunteers who cooked the Sunday meal. But the boys only used this phrase once and it wasn’t when I had prepared their meal, it was when we ate fast-food from Wendy’s.

As they prayed, an fireworks of conviction popped in my head. When is the last time I prayed for a fast-food worker?

Truth be told, the only time I even acknowledge fast-food employees is when I am complaining about something they did wrong. To take the time to pray for their hands, hands that weren’t even at the table to hear us, is so, uh, well, un-American. When we pray we want the beneficiary of our prayer to know we’re praying for them like we get some kind of spiritual or relational points for acknowledging them before God. Two points if I remember to thank Grandma, three if I remember Grandpa too.

If that’s the way I pray, just how sick am I?

The other meals the boys ate, I prepared myself (and by “myself” I mean prepared frozen food). I am not the world’s best cook, so what I lack in quality, I try to make up in quantity. If I served one type of fruit, I served three types. If there was bread, there were two loaves. The beverage choices were practically unlimited. Somehow, I thought that would make up for my inability to create gourmet meals. But no matter how much food was on the table, the boys ate just enough to meet their physical requirements.

This is important when you know what they prayed after they thanked God that they had food to eat. They would always pray, “And Gawd, please remember our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers back in Kenya. Help them to find enough money today that they might also have food today.”

Are you crying yet?

Because it was about this point in their prayer that my stomach would do flips and my eyes would start to water. I’d dream about packing large crates of food and addressing it to “Moses, Kevin, Dan, and Eddy’s Families.” And anyone else who is hungry.  I know there are starving people in the world, but I didn’t know them until I met their sons.

I wanted to overturn my kitchen table out of anger that I have so much and they have so little. Had I been in their place, I would have been so bitter. Guest me would have lectured host me on waste. I would have begged and guilted host me into sending money to my hungry family and friends at home. I would have turned on “Gawd” asking why he did so much for host me and so little for Kenyan me. But these thoughts never seemed to cross the boys’ minds. They were grateful that they had a meal. And they trusted God that he would provide for those who didn’t.

No blame.

No guilty-finger pointing at those of us who had more.

No, “I’m not going to eat because my family can’t,” show of solidarity. Just acceptance and quiet prayer for those who didn’t have their food they had at this meal.

See, here’s the thing; I don’t even know how to thank God for my food. Because I don’t know what it’s like not to have it.

Sure I’ve fasted for medical or spiritual reasons, but I knew there was an end. And I knew my child was eating. I can’t imagine the horror of not knowing if or when you would eat again, let alone being a Kenyan mother watching her child cry because of the pains in his empty stomach.

Food to me is like oxygen. It’s in abundant supply and I can have whatever I want whenever I want it and I don’t think about it because there’s enough for everyone else in the room too.

In other words, I take it all for granted. My oxygen, my food, and the geeft of my life.

So when it comes to prayer, I am not sure I’ve ever prayed from a place where I was really grateful for what God has given me. Frankly, I’m not sure I’ve ever done more than repeat trite and often used phrases when I prayed. Hearing my new Kenyan friends pray opened up my eyes (and my heart) to the place God wants us to be when we approach him at his throne.

These young men take nothing for granted, not their life, not the oxygen they breathe, nor the food they eat. And when everything is a gift, you thank the giver for it. That’s why these Kenyan friends pray differently than I do.

They pray from a different place than I do — a place of gratitude.

Lesson #1 from the Kenyans:  The place of prayer matters.

Do you recognize yourself in this post? Are you one who prays from gratitude or are you perhaps more like me and pray from a place of entitlement and apathy? Where do you pray from?

~Jennifer