# 18 The McAllister Prayer

Today as I was leaving the Refectory I paused for a moment to speak Dr. Taylor’s wife.

Dr. Glen Taylor with Josiah Elliot

Dr. Taylor’s mother was an Elliot from the famous McAllister-Elliot connection.

Four of the McAllisters’ thirteen children married four of the Elliots’ eight children producing 60 double cousins. (So the martyr Jim Elliot’s father was my husband’s grandfather’s double cousin.)

Saved in middle life, the McAllisters took Psalm 78 very seriously:

       … we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done.

He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.

Their prayer was that “the children yet to be born” would in turn tell their children about God and his praiseworthy deeds.