Did You Think to Pray?

 Mary Ann Pepper Kidder was born in Boston in 1820.

History has some ambiguity as to her particular faith and where she lives at specific points in her life, but it is agreed she was a prolific hymn writer composing as many as a thousand hymns in her lifetime.

Many of them were lost as new hymnals were organized and published but of those that were passed on there was  a familiar theme.  

God will be there for us, if we do as He has asked.

This is a message she learned firsthand when as a teenager she was blinded and later regained at least partial sight. 

No stranger to tragedy, her husband died in the Civil War, her son drowned and her daughter died of heart disease.  

Yet her hymns were reminders of her faith and included these:

Don't Forget to Read the Bible

Don't Forget to Do Good

Go To Sunday School, Dear Children 

Jesus, Help Me Day By Day 

Fear Not Little Flock Says the Savior

And in our hymnal-

Did You Think to Pray. 

Ere you left your room this morning, did you think to pray?

In the name of Christ, Our Savior, did you sue for loving favor as a shield today?

Oh, How praying rests the weary!

Prayer will change the night to day. 

So when life gets dark and dreary,

Don't forget to pray. 

Do I make praying my first and highest priority each day? 

Do I take my troubles to everyone else first or to the Lord, who has actually promised to help ease my burdens? 

He has also promised to help protect us, not to take  away our trials, but to strengthen us and be there with us. 

So when life gets hard and difficult, and it will, fall back on the pattern already set. 

Don't forget to pray.