Blog | Submit 40 Day requests

When we launched the 40 Day project I was confident that writing one prayer each day would be easy. I'm a preacher and pastor, praying is what I'm supposed to be doing anyway. How much harder could it be to write down the prayers that I silently say to myself every day (almost every day)?

It's hard.

The impermanence of work published on the web makes the artist feel less anxious about putting their work out there. Posts, pictures, and essays have a short shelf life. Soon something more interesting will show up to capture the audience's attention. But publishing on the web also means that your work will be critiqued, judged, possibly misunderstood, and definitely remain available forever in google's cache.

So I'm fretting with 13 days to go that my prayers are growing stale. I'll be fine, but I have no idea if my prayers are resonant or even relevant. The comments section is about as crowded as a Blockbuster parking lot.

Borrowing from the model of my colleague, Maria Fabrizio, who does a single illustration based on a news story each weekday, I wrote a prayer recently on the Washington landslide. I'm open to prayer requests from you as well. Send in your suggestions to subscribe@downtownchurch.me.

Disclaimer: The prayer needs to be universal enough to reach a wide audience, so don't ask me to pray that you will get a 5.7% raise after your next annual review.