Periodically I’ll write and post a 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.  This particular prayer is about ideas.  Pray with me, if you will.

Dear God,

For some of us countless ideas run around in our heads.  For others of us the struggle is to start seeing anything at all.  Grant us the ability to see when our heads are clouded, the ability to hear when the story is being told somewhere just beyond our ear’s grasp, and the ability to put enough form to that thing so it feels.  Help us hold the idea gently.  Help us appreciate and respect the models you’ve given our world, the idea generators whose stories stay and sustain.  Sift through the mess and the garbage inside us so that what we find is truly a treasure.  Search us and shine your light through us so that we can see ourselves as sparkling vessels capable of repeating the amazing in our work.  Enable us to organize, to structure, and to take one step after another.  Give us the gifts of something that can nourish the world.  May we use them for good.  Place in our hearts strength and stamina so we can see those nourishing gifts on display.  And make us mindful to call them yours.

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

Amen.