Sidebar:

The Church of England's newsletter Going for Growth (children's ministry/youth) cites a recent survey

Children & the Lord's Prayer (survey) . They also offer a resource page to help kids explore and use the Lord's prayer.

I find myself using it more. When we were kids we prayed before bed with one of my parents or grandmothers: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, keep me safe all through the night and wake me with the morning light. God bless..." And you go through the list of every living creature you know. The longer the list, the longer you have before you have to go to sleep. There were probably times when I prayed "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." There may be other verses.  With our (now young adult) kids, we prayed Thank You prayers and we prayed for people. They learned the Lord's prayer but didn't use it in our evangelical/charismatic church every Sunday. They don't know it well.

Sometimes I prayed the Lord's prayer at night near the end of elementary school. I knew it because we prayed it in church every Sunday. And we went to church every Sunday.  A traditional Presbyterian church, soon to celebrate 225 years. When we actually started to look for a church when I was in my late 40's, early 50's I realized it was something I had never done. The Lord's Prayer (with a few differences) was one of those things that remained the same from church to church, denomination to denomination. A common denominator, if you will.

I've been praying the Lords' prayer more out of church in the last five years than ever before. Less "name-it-claim-it". More "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Did you ever wonder what that must look like from where God sits?