Musing: A Wing & A Prayer

Have you ever felt like your prayers weren't being heard? That they didn't even get past the ceiling of the room in which you were praying? I was reminded the other day of a story from one of the Gnostic gospels. It was about Christ as child. Some of the children in his home town were playing in the mud after the rains and made little clay birds. Jesus came by, touched the clay birds, and they came to life and flew off to the heavens!

George MacDonald, Scottish novelist, poet and Christian writer (1824-1905), wrote a poem based on that beautiful story:

My prayer-bird was cold -- would not away,
Although I set it on the edge of the nest.
Then I bethought me of the story old --
Love-fact or loving fable, Thou know'st best --
How, when the children had made sparrows of clay,
Thou mad'st them birds, with wings to flutter & fold:
Take, Lord, my prayer in Thy hand, and make it pray.