Christmas and Prayer

I have been working on my Christmas prayer for each of our three Christmas services.  I was about halfway through when I decided to see some others...and in my search, I came across a variety of angry articles in newspapers about how hard it is to find a place where Christians are allowed to pray in this country...

My prayer remains half-complete because I am angry and not in the right spirit to write the way I need to.  I'm angry because I am tired of being lied to by these voices complaining that we aren't allowed to pray anywhere.  I'm tired of having the voices of conservative talk show host and editors and fundamentalist pastors lie to our children and the people of our country.  Why are Christians telling our children they aren't allowed to pray?

Am I missing something? If a child bows their head at the beginning of class to dash off a quick prayer, will someone yell at them to stop?  Will an adult come and unfold the hands of kid who prays before he or she starts eating their lunch?  Is a coach going to make the athlete who kneels and prays before a game do extra wind-sprints because that simply isn't allowed?

Hear me now: nobody can stop you from praying anywhere or at anytime.  I'm even going to go out on a limb and say that nobody will ever stop you from praying. 

When are we going to start sending this message to our children?  When are we going to start preaching this message to our people?  When are we going to encourage people to openly practice their faith in simple, personal ways?

So as people line up to say that the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut are the result of prayer being banned in school, I say hogwash.  If our children aren't praying daily as part of their personal faith, we only have ourselves to blame.  If prayer isn't happening in schools, we only have ourselves to blame.