In a cold, dank
cathedral, somewhere in Northern Ireland, I knelt beside my daughter and prayed.
My focus was drawn
to the large stained glass window just over my right shoulder. “For this child
I have prayed.” The words were so forceful that I went to have a closer look as
our tour group was leaving.
The window was
given in memory of someone, as most windows are. It was made of brilliant red,
green, blue, and yellow bits of glass. A child stood in the foreground.
This message
struck home for me as I had so often prayed for the child who was with me. At
twenty-three she had reached a crossroads in her life. Should she go to medical
school? Would she be accepted? How about the young men she was dating? Was one
of them Mr. Right?
I look out the
window of our home church and see the graves of children. Some are adorned with
small stone lambs or angels. I imagine the heartbreak as two distraught parents
laid their little one to rest.
In the mountains
of East Tennessee there are graves—really no more than large rocks—outside of
the kitchen windows of old farm houses. The mountaineers call these ‘kitchen
babies.’ Tiny children, many who died before they could be named, were buried
here so that their mother could look out and pray for them as she worked.
I saw a painting
of an Ancient Egyptian couple lying prostrate over the elaborate sarcophagus of
their child.
What about Mary,
as she watched the brutal crucifixion of her first born? How her heart must
have broken.
“For this child I
have prayed.” The marriage service in my Episcopal prayer book has a prayer
that asks for ‘the gift and heritage of children.’
Our children are
our future. They embody our past. Our prayers to a good God who loves them more
than we can ring out across the world—in cathedrals, through kitchen windows,
in simple graveyards of centuries past.
By Edith Edwards
Edith Edwards lives and writes on the banks of the beautiful Lockwood
Folly River in southeastern North Carolina. This scenery can be found in her
books and articles. She and her husband Don have two grown daughters and four
grandchildren--all great people. Edith has just retired after 29 years as a
teacher and speech therapist. She has written two books of fiction and
coauthored a book of short stories. She belongs to the Writers Bloc--a
dedicated group of writers at Holden Beach.
