A little boy was entering school for the first time. His busy mother packed his lunch and told him, “Go straight up the road across the bridge to the school house.”

Seeing a fish in the stream below the bridge, the boy laid down his lunch and tried to catch it. Then he saw a beautiful butterfly, and he left the fish and tried to catch that instead, but it eluded him and led him farther and farther from the road. He finally gave up the chase but alas, he could not find the bridge so he decided to pray.

Now he only knew three prayers, and as his case was urgent, he decided to say the shortest one. He knelt down and started it:

“God bless Papa,

God bless Mama,

And make me a good little….”

As he was about to say “boy,” he realised that that prayer would not fit the case; so he started the one next to it:

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray Thee Lord, my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake…”

He was about to say the last line – “I pray Thee Lord my soul to take,” when he came to the realisation that that prayer would not fit the case either. So he decided to pray the long prayer – The Lord’s Prayer.

He started saying it loudly, “Our Father…” Instantly, he heard a voice behind him. It was his own father who had followed him because he knew it was his first day in school and he might need help.

In telling this experience years later, the boy, then grown to manhood, said it was the greatest revelation of his life to realise his father was so near.