School starts up again this week in our corner of Texas. The teachers have decorated their rooms and prepared their lesson plans. Students have a new outfit or two and have checked off every item on the supply list. Pencils…check. Composition books…check. Folders…check. Crayons, markers, and colored pencils…check. Everything’s ready. We have everything we need, right?
This Sunday at church, we gave our teachers and students two more things that will equip and sustain them for the coming school year. We gathered our teachers and students at the front of the church to be blessed and prayed for. Then each of them received an embodiment of the prayers prayed over them–a pocket prayer shawl. This tiny version of the prayer shawl is small enough to fit in a pocket, a pencil box, or a backpack. As a student faces the challenges and frustrations of learning new things, the pocket prayer shawl serves as a reminder that God is with him, that He will help her, that their church family is praying for their success. The sight of a pocket prayer shawl propped on a teacher’s desk can encourage a teacher on a tough day.
Beyond the Classroom
Other settings lend themselves to pocket prayer shawls. My husband received a red, white, and blue one right before his deployment to Baghdad in 2010. Tucking that tiny expression of prayer, love, and support into the left front pocket of his ACUs became part of his morning getting-ready-for-work ritual that he continued even after he returned home safely from his year-long service overseas. Now retired from his career as an Army physician, he continues to care for patients at a faith-based clinic for the underinsured and uninsured in our area. He keeps a supply of pocket prayer shawls at work to give to patients who need courage and the assurance that they are not alone in the difficulties they face.
I carried some with me in my briefcase at the writers’ conference where I pitched my novel, The Heavenly Hugs Prayer Shawl Ministry for the first time. I’d . As those of us signed up to speak to this agent waited, we talked about our work…and our nerves. There was so much riding on this one conversation with an agent. I gave several of my fellow sufferers pocket prayer shawls. Later that day, one of the writers found me to share her good news. Holding the shawl while she told the agent about her book had helped her stay calm, she said. Her face glowed as she told me that the agent asked her to send the full manuscript for consideration.
A Small Thing?
Pocket prayers shawls may be tiny, but their effect can be mighty. You can pack a lot of prayer into the hour it takes to knit one. Interested in learning how to make a pocket prayer shawl? Let me know in the comments section. If there is enough interest, I’ll post the pattern in my next blog!
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