It can all be in a card!

Now I am guessing many of you might have parted with your Christmas cards to recycle or keep until next year. If you still have them they can be most useful as an aid to our prayer life.

Firstly, have a look through them and roughly sort into different piles eg pastoral scenes, city scenes, religious themed ones, animals etc. Then break each card down into prayer themes. So a view of a postbox can be a prayer for the mail delivery in the UK, for all who work within the mail service and Post offices both locally and further afield. It is an opportunity to return thanks for our mail, letters, contact with others and even bills for our heating, lighting etc. A city scene could represent prayers for the lives of our cities for those who live there - in inner cities and all that goes on, perhaps for poverty and deprivation, unemployment and those who struggle. A fun card can remind us to pray for children, schools education those home schooling etc. To give thanks for things which make us happy as we celebrate and rejoice. Animals might remind us to pray for farmers, our wool or grain industries, those who put food into shops and ultimately onto our tables or give thanks for the glory of creation..

There is so much here to enrich our prayers and broaden who we pray for and we can use a different theme for different days of the week or for different times when we settle to prayer. Of course this isn't tied to Christmas cards and you could try birthday cards, magazines just looking at the pictures or sketches. It is a tool to help us not to be tied down by and something which might give us a richer prayer time. remember not only to pray for others but to return thanks to God for what we have or what our community/world has.

When you have exhausted the front of any card, turn to its sender inside. Then remember, the sender (and family) in prayer, their situation and where they live. A practical follow up to this prayer could be to phone up/ email/ snail mail and have a bit more of a chat. I know that only this week someone from the distant past, a member of a church we had under our care many years ago, rang up to catch up on our news etc. It felt lovely on the receiving end and gave a lift to the day. Do try it!

Our prayer life is vital, but it can become stale and at times difficult and trying slightly different approaches can be creative and helpful. It can open a new door and help us grow in confidence. It can give us ideas to develop and we can use many aspects of our life to help with this as well as old cards, what we see on our daily walk and the view from the window. As I prepare this blog article, I look out of the study window out on the seagulls amassing in the sky and I think of the storm and all who work at sea, or who care and rescue all on the waters.

Enjoy looking at your prayer life and maybe trying some new things out, to enrich and help you.