PRAYING
FOR MISTER ROGERS

Topics: Children; Community; Disabilities; Humility; Intercession; Self-image; Self-worth

Reference: Colossians 4:2–4

The late Mister Rogers once visited a teenager with cerebral palsy. At first the boy was so nervous about the visit that he began hitting himself. His mother had to take him to another room.

Mister Rogers waited patiently, and when the boy came back, the star of children’s television asked the boy, “Would you do something for me?” The boy answered yes on his computer. “I would like you to pray for me,” Mister Rogers said. “Will you pray for me?”

The boy was shocked because nobody had ever asked him for something like that. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers. At first he didn’t know if he could do it, but then he said he’d try.

From then on, the boy kept Mister Rogers in his prayers. He didn’t talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figured Mister Rogers was close to God, and if Mister Rogers liked him, that must mean God liked him too.

When Mister Rogers was asked how he knew what to say to make the boy feel better, he said, “I didn’t ask prayers for him; I asked them for me. I asked because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.”

—Wendy Murray Zoba, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Christianity Today (March 6, 2000)