You never know when God will intersect your everyday with something sacred.

Even something as simple as a dandelion.

The other day I was walking out to the mailbox and glanced down. Lying at my feet was a perfect puffball of a dandelion gone to seed. Detached from its root, it was resting on my blacktop driveway ready to send it seeds up and away at the first breath of wind.

I want to be like that dandelion …

with a perfect puffball of seed-prayers ready to send aloft at a moment’s notice — no matter where I am — because I’ve found that sometimes the wind of the Spirit puts me in places where it wouldn’t be my first response to pray. Will I listen or wait for a more “fitting” place?

Over the last year, God has prompted me to waft a few seeds of prayer while –

• in the middle of a facial at a spa. I stop and pray with my esthetician as needs bubble to the surface. Off blows a seed of prayer.
• on the phone with a new friend worried about her aging father. Another seed wafts away on the breeze.
• at a meeting where a person suffers a breakdown. Three of us pray as emergency workers attend to her needs. Seeds floating all around us.
•  in the median of a busy road with a desperate young woman on a cold, miserable night. Winter winds carry this seed up to heaven.

Praying in church is intuitive. But it’s in the middle of living our lives that God sends opportunities for prayer that may be a bit risky as we open ourselves to ridicule or rejection. Yet being willing to gently blow our seeds of prayer for others makes a pathway for the work of God in their lives.

When I met the young woman on the median,  disbelief, tears, and relief played across her face as we hugged. And prayed. In the midst of cars whizzing by us on a freezing night, a puff of the Holy Spirit dispersed love, comfort, and hope right there on the “blacktop driveway.”

We can’t afford to wait for perfect timing and comfortable circumstances. We always carry the seeds of prayer within us, and when the Spirit prompts, it’s time to take a deep breath, catch the wind of the Spirit, and let them fly.

What about you? How is God using you in His kingdom work? Leave a comment to let me know.

Pray on!

Mary at Mahseh working away!

I looked over at Mary furiously typing away, hunched over her keyboard eyes locked on the screen. I had been in the same position myself for the last 90 minutes sitting next to her at the desk. We were at the beautiful Mahseh retreat center having been blessed  to find this secluded haven on Lake Bruce in Indiana. With a new study launching in just a few months, we pushed our minds into high gear, brainstorming ideas.

Our desk nestled in front of a bank of windows overlooking the lake, and I glanced up transfixed by the scene in front of me. Unnoticed by us, God was mixing his palette of paints and dusting his sky canvas with gorgeous hues. Crimson reds blended with tangerine oranges as the sun sank in a fiery ball.

“Mary, look!” I said and pointed out the window. She looked up and gasped, bleary-eyed from her work. While the sun dropped below the horizon, we both soaked up God’s latest masterpiece.

“We almost missed that,” Mary said. “God plunked us down in the middle of all this beauty, and we almost missed it because we were so focused on our work.” She made a bug-eyed look and stared at her screen in a perfect imitation of us over the last few hours.We both giggled at how funny she looked, but the irony wasn’t lost on us.

I wonder how often we go through life oblivious to the gifts God gives us.

We run furiously from task to task, missing people in front of us, nature surrounding us, and the strains of music wafting through the air. God created us with five senses and all too often we forget to use them. We need to remember to pause throughout our day, look up, and notice the intersection of the sacred and the everyday. Because it’s where these two meet that we find the fingerprints of God.

Where have you seen Him today? Share your sighting below.

Over the weekend, Mark and I were sharing pizza with friends, talking about our family Christmas traditions. One of our friends is from Columbia, and I asked him about how they celebrated Christmas in Columbia when he was a child. It’s so interesting to learn what’s important in other cultures.

In his village, Christmas Eve is the big celebration, marked by fireworks, special food, attending mass, putting up a small outdoor tree, and exchanging gifts. “The gifts, however, don’t go under the tree,” he said. I looked at him waiting for the explanation for this and was touched to hear this memory:

“In our village what was important was the Nativity. All the families would make their own Nativities. We went outside and gathered moss and other materials to build our own nativities. Then we took the time to put it all together. The tree was not the focal point of Christmas, the Nativity was, and the baby Jesus was the reason why we had gifts. We put our gifts around the Nativity, and we exchanged gifts because of Him.”

What a wonderful Sacred Everyday moment. How blessed he is to have years of building nativities with his family that engraved on his heart the real reason for Christmas.

Captivating colors

                                                 and

                                                   tempting textures

of luscious yarn never fail to lure me into big or little knitting shops I happily stumble across. Such was the case the other morning, and I, entranced, open the door and follow my eyes to the skeins posing on the shelves.

I walk back and forth weighing my options, considering my ever-growing list of people to receive knitted Christmas gifts. Poking around the shelves, I find a perfect project to knit up quickly. With chunky yarn on big needles, even I, a notoriously s-l-o-w knitter, will finish five of them with time to spare before Christmas.

The bell jingles and the door shuts behind me as I head back to the car. The glinting sun illuminates the display window, stopping me in surprise. A Scripture glistens off the glass. Funny, I hadn’t noticed it on the way in, two of my favorite things juxtaposed like this.

This unexpected gift of scripture and yarn knitted together makes a happy spot in my soul. Why haven’t I ever thought about the work of my hands as being something sacred? Might my hands actually capture a bit of His beauty, reflect a bit of His creativity in every stitch, every pattern I make? My heart says “yes.”

God snuck in this Sacred Everyday at Always In Stitches today. Where have you found yours?

Pray on!

I am excited to post my first Sacred Everyday moment. If you’re not sure exactly what I’m talking about, read this post and you’ll understand.

Today I signed on to Facebook and was greeted by this post from my son.

I was staring at a full-fledged answer to prayer. I had been praying for my son for many years, and right if front of my eyes for all the world (at least Facebook world) to see was this post. Yeah! God is good. And I hadn’t even been bugging Jesse about getting baptized. I was quiet and let God be God and work in his life. Galatians 6:9 flitted across my mind as I held my own little happy-dance party:

“So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.” (NLT)

God collided this Sacred Everyday moment right into my everyday, and I didn’t even have to look to find it!

What about you? Have you noticed a Sacred Everyday today? Please share it below, as momentous or as everyday as it may be. We never know where or when the two will intersect.

Pray on!