Ministry's quilts offer hands-on prayers

John Fisher can feel the prayers for him.

Every day, Fisher goes into his computer room and lays a hand upon a red, white and blue quilt hanging there. It was made for him six years ago by strangers in California and sent to him in Cedar Hill, Texas, while he was hospitalized with prostate cancer.

"I tell you this about the quilt — it blew my socks off," said Fisher, who recently turned 75. "I break down right now thinking about it." Softly, he began to cry.

Fisher's quilt is a "prayer quilt," a soft sandwich of fabric and cotton batting that is held together by strands of tied cotton floss instead of an intricate pattern of stitches. Every knot in the hundred-plus ties was made by someone he will never meet, someone who prayed just for him while binding the thread.

It is these knots — and the prayers they hold fast — that he touches each day.

"It really, really puts God close to you, and I am sincere when I say that," he continued after a pause, his voice still ringed with tears. "I go by it daily now and put my hand on it and say a little prayer to God. That is what it means to me."

Fisher's prayer quilt was made by members of the Prayer Quilt Ministry, sometimes called Prayers & Squares. The ministry, with groups across the United States and beyond, provides quilts for people who are in some kind of crisis — an illness, a difficult personal time or a daunting obstacle. Once quilts are assembled, they are placed before a congregation and everyone is invited to tie a knot and say a prayer for the recipient.

But the quilters don't say just any prayers. One of the Prayer Quilt Ministry rules is that recipients must be asked what prayers they would like to receive. Some who are sick ask for healing. Others ask only for the best possible outcome. Still others ask simply for peace.

When Gene Moore's family requested a prayer quilt for her mother, who was in the hospital at the end of her life, she said, "We did not pray for healing; we prayed for comfort. We prayed for peace. Because it was time. My sister put it over her (mother's) hospital bed and placed her hands on the knots. I feel she knew it was there."

And that, members say, is what the Prayer Quilt Ministry is about. Its goal is simply to remind those who are suffering that they are not alone in their difficult time.