I was listening to the radio, more as background noise than anything else, when I heard something that actually made me stop what I was doing and really LISTEN.

I was listening to a man crying, really crying, about how his son would someday not know what the 10 Commandments were, because a huge granite slab was being removed from public property.

Still crying, he went to say that his son would not know how to pray, because the state did not allow corporate prayer in the schools.

Hearing the man really did make me sad, I really believed that he meant every word he was saying.

But I also really wanted to scream at the radio.

“If your son needs to see the 10 Commandments, couldn’t you put them on the walls of your home? Better yet, assuming he can read, couldn’t you do a Bible study with him on the 10 Commandments, instead of watching that video or whatever you panned to do tonight?”

I wanted to ask him if he prayed at home with his son. Did they start and end the day with prayer..was “grace” said over meals? Had he taught his son that prayer wasn’t just about asking God for “stuff, but prayer included giving thanks for what he had?

I wanted to ask him. “What are you doing at home, that lets your son know that your faith really is important to you, and that God is first in YOUR life”?

I wanted to tell him that it isn’t “public displays”, or “public rituals” that will cement your son’s faith, but what he is able to see YOU do in private.

I wanted to tell him, that even tho I “walked away from my faith for a time”, it was what I learned from my Grandmothers LIVED in their homes that has lasted some 4 decades later…. NOT what I may have seen on some monument, or :leraned from some “rote” prayer recited back when there was prayer in the schools,

But somehow I know, that even if I could have made him hear me, he still wouldn’t have HEARD me.

It is a lot easier to “talk the talk” than to “walk the talk”

 ©2005 Ninure Saunders