Children's story and prayer: Playtime

Annie had been looking forward to her birthday for ages. She had a twin brother Alan, and their mum and dad had promised that they could have a games console for their birthday. There were some rules attached.
Firstly, they had to share it.
Secondly, they were only allowed to play on it for an hour at a time and thirdly, they were never to fight over it.
Both Alan and Annie had to promise this.

Their birthday arrived. Annie could hardly wait to have her first game, but before they set it up, their Dad reminded them of the rules again and asked them once more to promise that they would not break them. 'We promise!' shouted both the children, eager to get started. Dad helped them set it up and left them alone to play.

Within five minutes he had to come back into the room. They were arguing over whose turn it was. Dad reminded them of their promise and left them again. For a while, all was quiet. In fact, for a long while, all was quiet. Mum and Dad were busy and hadn't kept track of the time. When their Mum went to find them two hours later, they were still playing! They were playing tennis against each other so they didn't have to take turns.

'Annie! Alan! What did you promise?'

The children jumped, they were crestfallen. They knew they had gone against their word and had been playing for too long.

As it was their birthday Mum let them off, but she wrote out the rules on a piece of paper which she stuck to the bottom of the television set.

'Now you will know the rules without having to remember them, so you will have no excuse!'

Prayer
Loving God, we thank you that you have written the law on our hearts.
Amen.