Walking the way ...

This past Sunday, St. Margaret’s kicked off its Stewardship Campaign, “Walking the Way.” As part of the campaign, we have distributed information packets that include a pledge card. You will be seeing guest blog posts from our parishioners here on this blog. There will be articles written in our newsletter. This promises to be a fun and engaging campaign.

But one of the things I am most excited about is an idea that one of our Stewardship Committee Members had. The Walking the Way logo has both a cross and a stone path. When we first looked at the logo, the path symbolized for us the “way” that we walk with God – our own spiritual journey with God. But as we continued to look at the logo, the image became richer for us. We began to imagine the stones as representative of each parishioner at St. Margaret’s, as we journey together on this walk with God. Finally, as we played with the image of a walk and stones, we began to wonder whether actual stones might be a wonderful tool for us this year as we pray about our own stewardship this year.

And so an idea was born. This year, in addition to our letter, narrative budgets, and pledge cards, we each received a stone. The stone is meant to be a gift during this time for us to use during our prayer time – a tangible invitation into times of prayer in the coming weeks. For those of you who have used prayer beads before, you know how useful tangible tools for prayers can be. The tactile nature of something like a stone helps us focus our prayers, work through our anxieties, and ultimately cling to something that reminds us of our gracious Lord and Savior – as well as the community of faith who prays with us.

If you did not get your prayer stone on Sunday, don’t worry: there are more. If you did get your prayer stone, I hope you will start using it, and discover what gift awaits you in your prayer time. Each rock has a word painted on it to help encourage your prayers. Mine happens to say, “Love.” I look forward to meditating on how God’s love is a blessing to me, and how I hope to bless others through that same love. Happy prayers!