Prayers Lifted

BONNERDALE, ARK. – The Bonnerdale SOUL (Stitches of Unconditional Love), is an outreach-inreach group of our church that started eight years ago to make quilts and “Bags of Love” for children who have recently been taken into foster care. However, the group has begun making masks instead of quilts due to the current pandemic. 

I recently found myself at home lifting up a prayer to the Lord: “Here I sit in front of the stove. There’s lots of wood, plenty of kindling and plenty of matches, and here I sit in front of the stove singing, ‘It only takes a spark to get a fire going.’ Lord, you don’t even need the spark. You created this world out of nothing. In all of my 80 years I’ve never had to start a fire, but it’s 40 degrees outside and the temperature is falling. Please help me start this fire.”

 I have a dining table full of material to sew. Our quilting group has gotten requests for 350-plus masks in just the last few days. 

We’ve only just started the project and a storm has taken out the electricity, not only mine, but in at least seven of the surrounding towns. It was a bad storm. It took down several trees in my area and a large branch came down on the garage adjoining the home of one of the members of the SOUL group and of my church.

“Lord, we’re not much in our own eyes, but we’re precious to you – the apple of your eye. Please give us that hunger for souls, as great as or greater than my desire to start this fire in my stove or for that missing electricity. We need the power for our sewing machines, but more than that we need the power of Your Holy Spirit to be the people you want us to be, to love others as you love them and win souls for your kingdom.”

By June Bates