Using prayer beads can help us ‘talk to god’ or think about how our lives are going.

Some Unitarian Universalist kids believe there’s a God in heaven deciding how we live and when we will die. Other UU kids think God is the force of life and nature. Still others don’t believe in any kind of God at all. With all these different ideas about God, what would prayer (a kind of talking to God) be like for UU kids?

The Reverend Christopher Gist Raible, like all UU ministers, thinks that kids need to decide for themselves what their beliefs are about God, but he also thinks we can all benefit from prayer. Kids can use prayer to think about how their lives are going and to make plans for how to become the best people they can.

Reverend Raible says that when kids pray they might think about what they feel thankfu1 for, what they feel sorry for, and what they are hopeful about.

Virginia Steel, a UU Director of Religious Education added one more thing to the list of things Reverend Raible thinks kids can pray about: She thinks kids can also pray about what they want to improve in their lives. She used the word THIS to remember the four things we could pray about: being Thankful, being Hopeful, wanting to Improve, and being Sorry.

In some religions, people use a string of beads to help them count how many times they have said certain prayers. Catholics call these beads "rosary beads."

When Muslirns use beads to help them pray, they call it "tasbih."