Praying Outside The Box

When I walked into church on Sunday, I wondered if it was set up for a special day school event. I first noticed butcher paper on the walls of the narthex with baskets of markers near by. Then, in the back of the sanctuary I saw a table with clipboards, drawing paper and crayons, and another table with large balls of Play-Doh. As it turns out, our priest had set up a variety of “prayer stations” with different “activities” to encourage us to take different approaches to prayer.

During our service, instead of listening to a sermon we were given time to explore the activities. I ended up visiting four of the prayer stations:

Cloth Braids (for relationships):
Select three strips of cloth–one for yourself, one for the other person in the relationship, and one for God. (Silly me! I was going to pick one for me and one for each of my children, leaving God out of the picture until I learned the directions.) It was a very powerful experience to pray with the image of God literally weaving the two of us together.

Worry Stones:
Select a stone and pray over it with whatever is weighing down your heart. Place the stone in the baptismal font as a reminder of the promise in Matthew 11:28:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will refresh you.”

Scrabble Words:
Use Scrabble tiles to build on a crossword that describes your relationship with God.

Prayer Candles:
Light a candle as you pray for those in need of healing, to lift them up into God’s care.

(My priest explains the others on her blog)

Have you ever prayerfully walked a labyrinth?