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Knit Together

Pastoral Messages | October 10, 2024

During a recent gathering of the St. Paul Prayer Team, we talked about our various practices of prayer. Many of them have a special chair where they sit to pray for people in our community, and their Bible and prayer lists sitting on their laps. Some pray on their daily walks. One woman lifts her petitions as she swims laps in the YMCA pool. Susan prays while she knits.   

Given that she is never without her bag full of yarn, stitching her way through meetings or classes, or whenever she has a moment of quiet – she knits and therefore prays, practically without ceasing. Susan talked about how, with every stitch of her needles, she thinks about people and prayers for them. She names her family, her brand-new grandchild, her neighbors, our prayer lists, along with people around the city and the world who need it. Each stitch is a prayer, and they add up to scarves and hats, shawls and blankets – warm and beautiful, and full of Susan’s prayers. 

As she talked, I thought about how our prayers are like that yarn, strands of connections binding us together. In our prayers, we entrust people to God, but they become a part of us, too. They make a home in our heads and our hearts. Their presence in and with us changes us. When we pray for others, they become a part of us. God knits us together. 

There’s such power in this. On days like today (which might just be every day) when tragedies, disaster, and war bring such horror, our prayers keep us attentive. In our praying, all those people, who might be strangers, become a part of us. We pray for communities across Florida after Hurricane Milton tore across the state and for others still recovering from Hurricane Helene. We remain steadfast in remembering the people in Gaza and the West Bank, Israel, Lebanon, and beyond as war rages. We speak our heartbreak and yearning for countless other things, too, small and big, that bring suffering and fear to God’s people.  

We can trust that God receives those prayers, and those prayers change us. Holding those people across the world in our hearts motivates our actions and directs our lives. Even more, the ones for whom we pray are not forgotten. They are held, cared for, by our prayers. It is powerfully comforting to be held in the embrace of others’ prayers. The situation might not change, but to be prayed for is like being wrapped up in a divine warm blanket of care that remains present through everything.  

We know from Psalm 139 that God also loves to knit (“you knit me together in my mother’s womb”). God never stops interlocking people into deeper relationships with one another and with God. This is part of how prayer changes us and can change the world. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul writes about how we aren’t alone, no matter what we face. He wants our “hearts to be encouraged, being knit together in love.” (Colossians 2:2 ESV). In our prayers, we are knit together, pulled into deeper unity and connection, so that no one is alone.  

-Sara Olson-Smith, associate pastor

3 Comments on “Knit Together”

  • Marcia Willi

    October 11, 2024 at 4:10 pm

    Pastor Sara, love the story of Susan! I can so imagine her knitting/ crocheting and her fingers clicking those needles and the prayers being sent right to our Lord’s ear

  • Dixie Kutzbach

    October 10, 2024 at 6:11 pm

    So beautiful!

  • Suzy Schindler

    October 10, 2024 at 3:14 pm

    Such a lovely narrative of connectedness. I miss my mom’s hand knitted slippers!

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