Our daughter, Mary, texted me early one morning. “I’ve been praying that prayer to Lionel before bed — the one you always said to Dave and me growing up…it reminds me of you praying for us as you took us to school.” Lionel is her six-month-old son. I smiled and thought, “She’s remembered that prayer all these years, and now she’s passing it on to her child.” I prayed that prayer by their bedside each night and in the morning on their way to school.
She was referring to Numbers 6:24-26, also known as the Aaronic Blessing. God instructed Moses to have his brother Aaron pray it over the people of Israel as a priestly benediction — a formal, sacred sending-forth. In it, the Lord promises not merely to do good things for his people, but to turn his face toward them — an image of intimate, personal attention from the Almighty himself. “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
The very next day, our son Dave — David Jr. — called us. “I’ve got to tell you something funny Stella said when I was praying for her before bedtime.” Stella is their oldest daughter, age four. “I’ve been in the habit of praying the prayer you used to pray for Mary and me when we were little — the ‘Lord bless you and keep you’ prayer — and one night I forgot to say it. Stella stopped me before I left the room and said, ‘But Daddy, you didn’t say the PopPop Prayer.'” David dutifully returned to the bedside to pray Numbers 6:24-26.
It’s nothing short of miraculous how prayers come back to us. I think of words having “echo power.” Sometimes it takes years, even a generation, but prayers, by the grace of God, have a life of their own — they bless not only the child who first received them, but the one who prays them again, as if for the first time.
If I were to list all the book titles written about how to pray for your children, I could fill the rest of this column and spill onto the next page — and that’s just the titles. We have no shortage of methods and models for praying over our children. But the main thing is simply to do it and do it consistently. Each of my children remembered the words of that prayer because I said it nearly every day. The memory of a parent praying is powerful in itself, even when the child cannot recall the exact words. The image of a mother or father — or both — praying words spoken specifically for that child can leave an impression that echoes down through the generations.
The title of this column borrows loosely from the Steely Dan song “Peg,” in which the lyric “Peg, it will come back to you” is delivered as a cautionary word — a reminder that how we treat others, and the lifestyle we lead, has a way of finding its way back to us. The spiritual truth embedded in that idea runs deeper than karma. When we speak words of blessing over our children — consistently, faithfully, even quietly — those words do not simply vanish into the air. They take root. They are remembered by a four-year-old who won’t let her father leave the room without the “PopPop Prayer.” They travel across years and are texted from a young mother to her own father before the sun comes up.
Prayer, it turns out, really does come back to you — only it returns not as judgment, but as grace.