DO BABIES PRAY?

DO BABIES PRAY?

By Elijah Asuo Wiredu

What do you think about this subject? Do the sounds that babies make have meanings? Of course, they really make meaningful sounds. For example, they communicate hunger, fatigue, fear, and shock through crying. If crying can be a skill used in prayer, then it is possible babies do pray. Right from birth, babies make sounds such as gurgling, coughing, burping, sucking, cooing, and bubbling in the first 6 months of their lives before making sounds that appear meaningful to the languages they are born into.

Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength, silencing your enemies and all who oppose you.

Psalm 8:2

David said that God has established strength in the mouths of babies and infants. He further mentioned that God has taught children and infants to tell his strength (Adoration) and silence God’s enemies and God’s opposition (warfare)

Right from birth a person is a baby and is popularly called a newborn but after two months, they are called infants until they are one year old when they are called toddlers. Whichever way one tries to understand it, this will fit in the bible verse above -Psalm 8:2

Why would God select the mouths of babies and infants to establish strength? What will the babies and infants use the strength in their mouths for? I think prayer is one of them.

When Abram sent Hagar and her son Ishmael away from his house, they were dying of thirst and water was nowhere to be found. Hagar, not wanting to watch her son die distanced herself from the child. While the baby Ishmael was crying for water, Hagar cried for her son. Though both of them were crying, the angel of the lord said God has heard the cry of the boy.

God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

Genesis 21:17-18

How different was the baby’s cry from her mother’s and why do you think God heard the baby and not the boy? We could have a number of reasons but I think we will not be far from right to say that the cry of the baby was a prayerful cry.

So babies really do pray. What they say in their prayers is not important to us because they do not pray to us. If people are inspired by the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues that they don’t understand, then babies too can praise God in prayer without understanding.