Periodically I’ll post a written prayer for writers.  Other people can pray them, but they are coming out of my writing life, out of my hopes for the writers among us, and out of my desire for this blog to sit at the intersections between faith and writing.  Perhaps you can pray them, or a line from them, with and for the writers you read, know, and support.  My first prayer is in response to the blank page.  Pray with me, if you will.

Dear God,

Enable us to see the blank page as a gift and a friend.  Whether white or yellow or some other color, brighten that background until it becomes a wide invitation from the Creator of the best stories and the Maker of the most enduring truths about humanity.  See the page as we see it.  Notice our fears, most of which we keep to ourselves.  Count our hopes and measure the distance between what we want and what we’re able to accomplish.  Track the meanings of all the unwritten words and make sense, especially when we can’t, of why writing matters to us.  Make us unafraid of the page.  Help us to imagine it full and crowded.  Excite us over tomorrow when today’s phrases have felt forced or tired because we tried and we wrote but didn’t quite finish.  Give us the skills associated with gratitude.  Form us into thankful writers, people who are grateful for language and its gifts.  Make us fearless as one page ends.  Grant that we might see you in the blankness of what’s next.  Press into us faith and imagination because writing requires both.  And may we, in some way, offer you all we do.  And may our offerings entertain you, the most perceptive and faithful Reader.

In the name of the One who once wrote lost words in the sand,

Amen.