Praying in Color

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Archives for September 2012

Praying with Artist Trading Cards

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Friend Jim Bickford uses artist trading cards to draw his intercessory prayers. Artist trading cards are like baseball cards. Artists create their artwork on them and then trade them with other artists. The 2.5″ x 3.5″ cards are the perfect size for portable pocket-prayers–kind of Goldilocks size –“not too big, not too little, but just right.”

Here is a picture of some of Jim’s prayers. When a person needs special or urgent prayer attention, Jim puts the card in the window of his wallet. Jim says, “So each day a new name appears in the window. It’s easy to pull out a few cards and focus on these friends and family. Since I have more invested in the cards than just writing down someone’s name the experience seems much more personal. My praying in color prayer cards have become a vital part of my daily idiosyncratic rule of life.”

 

I just found out today that my husband Andy has been holding the wallet-window seat of honor for the past week since heart bypass surgery. Now that Andy is home and making a wonderful recovery, Jim will return him to the not-so-urgent stack and replace the card with another person whose prayer needs are more immediate.

Thanks, Jim, for all of those prayers! In the past ten days I have felt a wave of round-the-clock “unceasing prayer” from Jim and all the other loyal pray-ers around the world who have carried Andy (and me) through this surgery and recovery. Thanks be to God!

 

The Day After Heart Surgery

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A friend said to me yesterday, “You seem so calm.” She was right; I really have been calm. For the past forty-eight hours I feel like Andy and I have been floating on a cloud of witnesses. We have been held up on a magic carpet of prayer. For once I have surrendered and accepted the ride.

This two-day experience of my husband’s heart surgery has confirmed something I knew in my head but not so much in my heart. When my own arteries to God feel clogged and impassable, there is a whole community of friends, family, acquaintances, and even non-acquaintances praying on my behalf. This community becomes my “bypass” to God. If I ever wonder whether my prayers for others are really worth anything, I know now. The significance of my prayers is not their content as much as their intent. My prayers, the prayers of others, and all of us who pray them become part of the large cloud holding a person aloft and loved during adversity.

Prayers come in all flavors: verbal prayers, silent prayers, danced prayers, drawn prayers, sung prayers, walking prayers….Here are the prayers of my friends Sharon and Randall for Andy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Proper 17 Collect–Book of Common Prayer (p. 233)

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

 

 

 

 

Heart Healing

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Today has been long and scary and grace-filled. At 6:30 AM my husband Andy had quadruple bypass surgery. As a minister’s wife, I’m used to other people’s spouses in recovery and waiting rooms. It is a new experience for me to be on the receiving end of the prayers. Andy is thin and a non-smoker. He’s not an obvious candidate for heart disease.

The long wait for news from the operating room and the scariness of the procedure are obvious. (The long wait was actually broken by hourly updates from the OR nurses–an amazing practice of kindness.) What i never expected was the “surround-sound” of love from all around the country and beyond. Emails and texts from Maine, Florida, Washington, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, California, Louisiana, Delaware, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Sweden,…continue to arrive. A virtual prayer vigil has been operative for the past forty-eight hours–since we found out the surgery would happen.

There was also a little Praying in Color vigil at the hospital in the cafeteria. Friends Randall, Sharon, and Susan and I sat in the cafeteria and prayed and drew. My prayer is below.

I am overwhelmed by the vastness and wideness of love poured out on Andy and me. Thanks be to God and to friends.

There are so many wonderful heart passages in Scripture. Here are two I have held close to my heart today:

  • So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. 2Corinthians 4:16 (NRSV)
  • A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26 (NRSV)

On-Paper Walks with God

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Walking is one way I pray. It gives me the chance to move, to leave the busyness of my normal environment, to offer prayers to God, and to be silent. I like the alternation between talk and silence in the midst of my feet padding on the pavement or the road.

Jim Bickford’s prayers from my August 29, 2012 post reminded me of roads. They seem like a way to take a walk with God on paper. I also thought of artist Paul Klee who said “Drawing is taking a line for a walk.” The prayer drawings below are my on-paper walks with God and the people I’m praying for. Just as a reminder to me that the walk with God is always new and unpredictable, the lines never intersect.

Many hymns sing about walking with God. According to wiki.answers.com, the word “walk” appears 212 times in the King James version of the Bible. Here is a familiar passage from Psalm 116:8-9:
For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I walk before the Lord in the land of the living.  ((NRSV)