Illustrated Prayers for Life
I began writing Collect Prayers the second week of March 2020, around the time that the CDC recommended that no more than 50 people gather at a time on account of COVID-19. At the time, I wrote them in response to specific requests, from both personal friends and strangers on social media, who asked for words that might help them to cope with their fears and to make sense of the senseless.
I didn’t imagine that I would keep writing prayers, but new things kept happening that demanded new prayers: a prayer for grocers managing panic-buying shoppers; a prayer for medical professionals overwhelmed by countless sick; a prayer for anxious children at bedtime.
I also wrote a Prayer for Dashed Plans, a Prayer for Driving to Work, a Prayer for Feeling Stressed Out, a Prayer for the Adoption of a Child, a Prayer for Untimely Deaths, a Prayer Geographically Separated Worship, and a Prayer for the Pestilence that Stalks in the Dark.
I even wrote a Prayer for a Neighbor Behaving Like an Idiot, because I figured we all had a neighbor who fit that description, wherever we may live or whatever our political persuasion.
Phaedra and I once again partnered to create a new set of prayer cards, which we’ve called “Prayers for Life.” Phaedra has contributed a series of tide-pool watercolor paintings to one side of the card, while I have contributed the text the other side.
The prayers include such things as a morning prayer and an evening prayer, a work prayer and a healing prayer, a prayer for the alone and for frustrated relationships, along with prayers for justice, service, community, and mission.
Our supremely talented friend Shaun Fox designed the cards and The Rabbit Room has again kindly offered to print and distribute them.
Our hope is that these Prayers for Life might be placed on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror or bedside table or car console as a way to become helpful to you in whatever circumstance of life you may find yourself in and to enable you to feel that God is present to you in these circumstances.
Starting on November 1, you can purchase them here.
