Creator God, you formed the universe out of nothing.
You made all that we see, and all we don’t.
You made the rules and laws guiding the universe of matter.
From this you birthed the material of our craft.
Thank You.
Creator God, you show us the greatest artistry.
You turn light into sugar and trees,
In an ironic twist worthy of a master poet,
The waste of this transformation is the oxygen we breath,
Show us your ways.
Creator God, your spirit inhabited the crafts people of Israel.
You taught them, and watched over them, as they created your house,
They smithed metal and carved wood into forms worthy of your presence,
They wove tapestries for walls, and sewed costumes for those serving before you.
Give our craft your purposes.
Creator God, when you sent your Son you chose a maker as his step father.
You could have selected a politician or priest but you picked a carpenter.
His skills supported his family from Bethlehem to Egypt and Nazareth.
His faith raised a boy to a man who saved us all.
Make us makers worthy of your Son.
Creator God, your servants have prayed while making for millennium.
Your gospel went to the Gentile world through a tent maker.
Tailors and Dressmakers. Blacksmiths and Potters. Your followers have been all.
They asked for guidance while making.
Guide our craft.
Creator God, these maker’s prayed while they worked.
Prayers not only for their craft, but their families, churches, and leaders.
While they worked they lifted up the troubles of their world.
You heard them and answered.
Give us your prayers as we work.
Creator God, your glory surrounds us, today and forever.
Your creation confronts us in the sky and the forest.
In the beauty of how you knit together our lives.
In the ultimate glory of your kingdom on earth and heaven.
May your way, be our way, for ever and ever.
Amen.
The Story Behind the Story
A few years back I was shining my shoes, and I wasn’t very good at it. I was practicing a more conversational style of prayer, trying to just talk to God in all contexts. I asked him for help with this mundane task. Then I realized he not only knew everything there was to know about shining shoes, from the molecular composition wax to the proper hand motions of the shiner, but he had be in the presence of millions of shoe shiners. His followers practiced this skill for a long as there had been shoes in need of shining.
This morning while walking and contemplating how to write my NaNoWriMo project, this prayer came to me. The same spiritual guidance leading my wordcraft for a novel, was used to craft a prayer.
I came home and wrote this. A little like poetry, though I’m not poet. A formal prayer written for others to pray, something I rarely use and have never written before.
Such is walking in the Spirit as a Disciple of Yeshua.