When I received a note from Virginia, my Sunday-school teacher, telling me she was sending a birthday gift, my first thought was, Oh, dear, she shouldn’t spend money on me! Then I read on.
“In thinking about this gift. I asked God what I could give you that is a part of me, something with meaning and value. It came to me that my gift to you should be a promise of prayer.
So every Wednesday for the next 52 weeks I will lift you up to our Heavenly Father. And if, at any time throughout the year, you have special needs or desires, I’d like you to tell me so I can pray for you. Enclosed is a scarlet thread. Attach it to your calendar as a reminder of my ‘prayer promise’.”
Today I look at the piece of scarlet thread on my wall calendar and I think about Virginia’s wonderful, year-long gift, and of all the prayers that went into it for my job, my friends, my family, my own well-being.
It’s a gift that has been meaningful and valuable, especially because I, in turn, have started to give the promise of prayer to others.
