Above all, it is important to give the evening prayer a fixed and
permanent place in the daily schedule of our life. When we intend to
pray for something, the time at which it is done may be relatively
immaterial, but if we think of the prayer as a _protection_, the
evening prayer goes before anything else.
And why?
Because it requires the peaceful quiet of eventide--and the same thing
is true about all kinds of silly fun and of evil. In point of time,
the evening prayer meets with the tempting voices of wickedness that
sound with the greatest irresistance in the darkness. A decisive battle
thus takes place between the tempting voices of wickedness and the
evening prayer--a battle about time; it is a Whether--Or, for to divide
the time in twain in this matter is impossible. It is not possible to
devote one evening hour to wickedness, and the other to prayer. Then,
if the evening prayer is given a regular place in one's everyday life,
it is a protection against the temptations.
Therefore the evening prayer should be a part of the child's life even
'way back in the days of the cradle. And therefore we praise the fact
that the evening prayer is just that prayer which it is easiest for a
mother to make a part of the everyday life of the child; this is not
a mere accident, but is due to that grace of God which descends upon
Christian mothers. Say the evening prayer with your child, and for your
child, every evening when you tuck him or her into bed--do it even
before the babbling voice of the child is able to say the words after
you--and do never miss an evening!
The evening prayer which has thus been implanted in the heart of the
child because of the privilege and the intense love granted to the
mother-heart, and which is to be protected by that same love throughout
the years to come, will prove to be a real protection to the child
during its earliest youth, which is just the very time when it stands
most in need of _protection_ because the tempting voices of wickedness
resound with the greatest power in its own breast. For that reason the
time of youth is that period of our life when we stand most in need of
the evening prayer.
Loving parents often are somewhat worried when they discuss the day
that the children must go _out into the world_. Now and then a tear
drops from the mother's eye when she thinks that her half-grown boy
or girl soon must leave home. It is not because of worry for their
future, economically speaking, nor always because of the thought of
separation--but it is the fear; How will they come out? Will they
listen to the voices of wickedness, find evil associates, forget both
God and their parents so that they rather seek the _saloon and the
dance hall_ than the home of their childhood? Of course, you may say:
It won't be as bad as that! And, praised be God--these things do not
happen in a great many instances. But the danger is there, and the
temptations are ever present--and many a young man and woman who during
childhood were the very joy and pride of their parents, succumb to the
temptations and suffer during their youth such defeat that recovery is
possible only much later in life or--never:
You suffer for that through many years which only was
briefest delight----
But to comfort such parents let me say: Let the evening prayer find a
fixed and permanent place in the life of the child from the very days
of the cradle--then you have built a fortification about it which will
guard and protect it at all times because it has become an essential
part of itself. The evening prayer of its mother is the last thing the
child ever forgets--that which it is most difficult to part with. It
does not yield to a little push or two, but will powerfully assert its
right to occupy the seat of honor in the heart, and it will insist that
the quiet hours of eventide belong to it by right. And even though the
child throw its mother's evening prayer overboard in order better to
heed the tempting voices of wickedness, he or she will be conscious
of restlessness and uneasiness in the depths of the heart, until that
demand is met which the evening prayer makes. Yes, even though the
child may time and again scoff haughtily at the evening prayer and thus
apparently get far enough to push it away with all the silly "nerve"
of the age of adolescence and to conquer it--that time will come, is
sure to come, when the memory of it and the memory of mother awakens in
the child's heart and revives in loving remembrance so that the evening
prayer resumes its permanent place in the life of the child. The memory
of mother will be a treasure to the child who only then realizes that
the evening prayer proved a protection against the plentifulness of
temptations. She will receive the gratitude shown her with child-like
reverence, because she implanted the evening prayer in the heart of
the child. That was one of the mother's deeds of love that became the
greatest blessing throughout the storm-tossed time of youth. When
everything else sinks into forgetfulness, it will still be remembered
"what mother taught me"!