This is part two 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.

In my last post in this series, I wrote about how the kids in the Daraja Choir (and their chaperones for that matter) seem to pray from a different place — a place of gratitude. I wrote about how different that was from the place I often pray. I’ve spent some time thinking about why their prayers are so different from mine and I think the answer is pretty simple.

We’re praying to a different God.

My Kenyan friends spend their entire lives being grateful. They are grateful for everything, big, small, seen and unseen. These young men are thankful for the fact that they woke up, that they have fresh air to breathe, clean water to drink, and food to eat. They are thankful for shelter at night.

When they left our house they left a note saying things like, “Thank you so much for taking care of us.” “Thank you for your hospitality and caring for us like your own children.” And the one that gets me every time, “I really do not have a better way to describe what I want to say in words, coz words aren’t good enough to thank you for what you have done and been to us.”

Seriously?

I didn’t do anything for them.

I had hoped to do a lot, but Eddy was sick and so we stayed home instead of doing some of the things we had planned like rock wall climbing. Yet, they were thankful just to have been in our home.

See, my problem is that I am rarely that grateful for anything.  I can’t remember the last time I was thankful for the fact that I woke up, had air to breathe, a bed to sleep in, food to eat, or a place to stay. And the truth is by any standard, I’ve had more of these things and better of these things for longer than any of these young men.

But I’ve also never appreciated them the way they do.

If I am deeply honest, I often see gratitude as a pre-cursor to getting more. “Thank you for the birthday gift!” “Thanks for that compliment.” “Thanks for retweeting me.” My thank-you’s are often thinly disguised manipulations for encores, they’re rarely professions of extreme gratitude.

Perhaps this explains why my prayers seem so shallow compared to my Kenyan friends’ prayers. When they pray they are praying out of gratitude. They were so grateful to God for every little thing they have been given. When they pray, they pray in disbelief that the God who reigns is so good to them.

When I pray to God, I am hoping that more of what I am thankful for will continue to rain down.

My Daraja friends believe in a good God who reigns above everything. I believe in a God who rains down good stuff on me. It’s no wonder my prayer life is so shallow–my God is too.

Lord, help me to see you like my Kenyan friends see you. Help me to know that everything I have from the first breath I breathe in the morning, to the pillow I lay my head on at night and everything in between comes from you. I’ve done nothing to deserve anything I have. It’s only by your grace that I live and breathe. Help me to understand you like my Kenyan friends understand you — as the King who reigns in glory. Forever. Amen.

Who do you say prayers of thanks to? A god who rains down stuff or a God who reigns? And if God is the source of everything, how do you know the difference?

~Jennifer