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Writer's pictureN. Forbes Matheis

I Give Thee Lord my Soul to Keep

Updated: Feb 21, 2020

 

As children, we were taught a prayer for every major event of the day.

There was a prayer to start the day, a prayer to ring in lunch time, a prayer for dinner and a prayer for bedtime. These prayers were learnt by rote and we probably started learning them long before we could even talk. At first, they were ritualistically repeated at the command of an adult and little attention was given to their meanings. As we grew older, they became formalities which needed to be dispensed with before we could proceed to the real important businesses of the day.


It has always been evident to me that people feel some strange attachment to the prayers they repeat, for although they hold their breaths as they race through them, they refuse to get rid of them altogether. It is often joked that some people in the heights of their confusion about the importance of praying have written their prayers on placards and hanged them on their walls. Instead of wasting precious time saying these prayers, they simply point at the appropriate prayer to draw God’s attention to it. After all the Almighty can read. Such is the precarious position of these rote prayers; they are important enough to hang around, yet not important enough to gain serious attention, interest, or utterance.


My nightly prayer spent a long time in this precarious position.

For years, it was something I said religiously, every night, under command of an adult. It was a part of my going-to-bed routine and I loved it because it provided me a form of consistency and stability but I never gave thought or interest to the meaning of the words. For me, the prayer was important enough to say, but not important enough to understand.


Woman kneeling in prayer in front of a church altar with a mural of Jesus and angels above her
Woman kneeling in prayer

Even now, I can still hear my brothers’ and my own voice as we repeat the famous “Now I lay me down to sleep, I give the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen” This is a classic children’s prayer which dates back to the 1700’s and is believed to be the prayer uttered by Monk Preston throughout his childhood years. Growing up, I thought this was THE prayer that every child said before they went to bed. In fact, until recently I was unaware that different versions of this prayer existed.


We were gathered in a small group, when a parent decided to recite the prayer that he teaches his toddlers to say at bedtime. He started with the well-known lines “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” but as I was about to chime in and help him finish, he said “Angels watch me through the night, And wake me with the morning light. Amen” I was like: “Wait a minute”, “Way-a mint”, “Way-ment”. I know that he didn't just say that the way he said it. I know the words to that prayer because I have prayed them every night for so many nights and he just messed it up. I thought of telling him “You just stop right there, Sir because we are going to set this right, tonight.” I mean, this man just totally desecrated the bedtime prayer and then expected everyone in the room to say “amen”. “Oh no. You just way-a-mint-we gone get it right today”.


I think that must have been the first time, I gave the words of that prayer any serious consideration. In what felt like an hour but must have been a nanosecond, I heard the voices of my siblings and I reciting this prayer. I saw the faces of our various caretakers as they watched in reverence while we uttered the words and now, I paid attention to the words and particularly to those words that this parent had used. Why on heaven's earth was he teaching his children that it was angels that watched them, kept them safe through the night and woke them in the morning? Based on my prayer, it was the Lord who did these things. Why did this parent omit the part about dying? Isn't death one of those things that is focal in our prayers?


When I could take my internal murmurings no more, I approached and asked the parent why he had chosen to teach his children this version of the prayer. He explained that he omitted the lines about death because he didn’t want to scare his children. I didn't get it and I was still offended by his sacrilegious amendments of my childhood prayer so I retorted by letting him know that I had said the “death” version of the prayer all my life and never once was I afraid of dying.


In the days following this conversation, I started to examine how this childhood prayer had helped to form my theology and undergird my culture. I also started to analyze what the words meant in different contexts. For starters, I acknowledged that this parent had not grown up the way I grew up. Why did I expect him to see things the way I did or to believe what I believed? I imagined that for people growing up in societies where death by diseases or wars are rampant, this prayer would have a different meaning than for people growing up in a relatively war-free, disease-free environment. When death is not manifestly around you, there is no need to make room for it. As I looked at the prayer through these lens, I realized that this parent comes from a culture that does everything it can to avoid confronting old age and dying. Older folks are often shipped off to senior homes so that no one sees them as they age or take their last breaths. In this parent's world, death is a matter of great privacy and secrecy. The illusion of immortality is more important in his culture. Therefore the idea of a glowing angel, full or vigor and eternal life is a more attractive and compelling picture to paint for his kids.


On the other hand, in my culture, death is on the same continuum as life. They are intricately connected and cannot be severed. Death, like life, is not something to be shunned or to be afraid of, but something to be accepted, and embraced as its time comes.


At age (12) twelve, I had stood beside two of my family members as they passed on to the other side. “Passed away” or “passed on” is the euphemistic way to refer to the death journey.

I learnt a lot about life and death on those occasions. Many family members were gathered in a room to bid the dying family member our last farewells. It was not a joyful occasion but it was not an overly sad one either. No one was crying but we weren’t doing cartwheels. It was a solemn occasion. The adults explained to the younger that the dying person was on a journey to the other side and we were there to help ensure a safe travel. The first time I heard that explanation, it rattled my mind. I was about (9) nine years old and couldn’t understand how someone could be on a journey if they were lying there on a bed. By the time I observed the second “passing away,” I had resolved that this journey must be metaphorical rather than literal and I knew that it was an honor to be standing next to the person who was crossing over the threshold from this life unto the next.


On those occasions, I observed family members holding a cup of water to the dying person's mouth, feeding that person whenever he/she coughed. I was told that the water was to ensure that the dying person stayed hydrated for the journey to the other side. I listened as those gathered in the room called and honored the names of family members who were already deceased, claiming that the spirits of these deceased persons had come into the room to meet and welcome the dying person. With the exclamation of each name I felt goose pimples break over my skin. In my mind, at that moment, I was close to death since those who had died were present in the room with me. That was my reality, my context, my culture and in it there is no room to deny the existence death. Death is as real as life.


So what does this mean for the angels?


Three wooden crosses surrounded by large rocks on a hill
Three Crosses on a hill

Praying for angels to watch as I sleep and to wake me in the morning is not a bad prayer but I don’t know much about angels nor does that topic interest me. I know about God; that God is present within and outside of time and God is present on this side and on the other side. God knows all things including the time when each person will die. God has all power to keep each person both in life and in death. Since death is the inevitable journey from this side to the next, I would rather entrust my journey to the all knowing, all powerful, all present, God. God's omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence, is what gives me particular peace and security when I recite the words “If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Yes, oh Yes. "This night as I lay down to sleep, I give thee Lord my soul to keep.”


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