I love early mornings. Waking up early always seems exciting to me. Here in Australia the nights are getting rather cold now as we are approaching winter. These days when I wake up at five it is still dark outside. Sometimes I think it is better not to get up straight away. So I may tell myself to stay in bed for one more hour or so. Occasionally I am still a bit tired and go back to sleep after a little while. But usually I stay awake the whole time, lying in bed thinking about what I plan for the day or perhaps saying a few prayers. Often I remember my childhood prayers!

The family I grew up in was not very religious. During my whole childhood I remember being taken to church only once. This was for a service on Christmas Eve in 1943. Lots of familiar Christmas songs were being sung then. I thought this was wonderful!

Now what about prayers? Strangely enough there are some childhood prayers that I often remember when I wake up early in the morning. Then I am that child again who was being told to say these prayers before going to sleep.

The first prayer I learned was just saying that I am small and my heart is pure with only Jesus in it.

When I was a bit older I learned another prayer. saying that I was tired,  closing my eyes and asking the Lord to watch over my bed.

Mum also told me to ask God for the protection of all my loved ones. In the reciting of all the names there was always Dad included who was on the Eastern Front at this time of WW II.

Here are the prayers as I remember them in German:

“Ich bin klein,
mein Herz ist rein;
soll niemand drin wohnen
als Jesus allein.”

or

“Müde bin ich geh’ zur Ruh
schliesse beide Augen zu.
Vater lass die Augen dein
über meinem Bette sein.”

And I would say:

“Lieber Gott, behüte Mutti und Vati, Bodo und Peter, Tante Ilse, die Omi und Renate und alle die ich lieb habe.”