“How may I pray for you?” I asked. I nodded in agreement at the answer, adding the intention to my prayer list. And so I ask you, “How may I pray for you?” Please feel free to comment, and I’ll pray for your specific intention.
A childhood memory keeps coming forward lately. I was five, maybe six, watching the sunrise from my bedroom window, the deep oranges and pinks against the Rocky Mountains as clear today as it was in that moment. Awake and praying, looking out the window longing for an answer in the affirmative. I remember the prayer of that night and how it was answered.
I’ve kept prayer journals for perhaps the last thirty years, enjoying, grateful for the act of putting my whole person into prayer engaging hands, eyes, thought in an act of guiding heart and mind closer to Love. Grateful to bring churning thought to some kind of order as my mind dashes here, there, and everywhere. Taking time to remember those to whom prayer is promised. It is a place of honesty, vulnerability. It’s also a time to draw, or sketch and think about quilting. It is where I developed a love for fountain pens loving the feel and flow. I thank God for hands, mind, heart.
Some moments in prayer are painful, examining my conscience, where did I fail to love others deeply, with compassion, with the love of the Cross? Some moments in prayer rich in consolation of the Father’s love, grace, mercy. Some moments in prayer expressing the deep longing to know God in a deeper way, leaving me longing for more. Some moments of prayer hold such sweetness, these a gift for the other.
Prayer is intimately connected with friendship. Friendship with the Lord, with those close to me and those there is a distance for some reason. Of late the prayer is for those with whom there is a distance, for peace of heart, mind, soul for them. It is of seeking, of longing for an openness to God’s will. It is of gratitude for promptings to reach out to those I know to be struggling, I know the struggle. The prayer is for the right words to flow from my mind and experience to the pages.
This prayer is a longing to live in this present moment, rather than dwelling in conversations I’ll never have with people. It is a transformation of those conversations of a strength of my own will to praying for their needs in this moment, a desire to remember and recognize the feet of clay, the humanness, that they struggle with things of which I do not know.
Prayer has come while sitting at the machine and piecing and quilting. Gratitude pours out for the twenty-five years as a quilt maker, in gratitude for the quilts I’ve made, for the people I’ve taught, and will teach. In gratitude for the Creative. In gratitude for fabric designers and makers, thread makers, batting, geometry.
How can I pray for you?
God bless,
Teri
A Quilter's Heart 