Prayer Boxes

As you all know I lead a book club group at my church.  (Read more about it here)  We recently read a novel titled The Prayer Box by Lisa Wingate.  It was an excellent novel about a woman who is hired to clean out a house and finds over 80 prayer boxes left from the home's owner who passed away at the age of 91.  She begins reading the letters in the boxes and soon realizes they are letters written to God.  It is such an awesome novel, I highly recommend it!
After I finished the novel, I had the idea of making prayer boxes for the ladies in my book club group.  I made 11 boxes, and surprised the ladies with them at our meeting.  They were so excited and loved them!  It is such an interesting concept and I'll tell you how I made them and what you can do with them.

I flipped- flopped back and forth with what kind of box I wanted to use for the prayer boxes.  I looked at wooden boxes to paint, paper mache boxes, even tin containers, but I finally settled on photo boxes from Hobby Lobby.  These boxes are usually used to hold photos, and they even came with dividers, but they made perfect boxes for this project.  Of course I bought them when they were 50% off, which helped with the cost.  I also loved that they came with designs, so all I did was add embellishments. 

I made each one different with labels, I typed and printed on my computer, and then added flowers, butterflies, stickers, ribbon, and all kinds of goodies to specialize them for the ladies. You can do whatever you want with yours to personalize it to your style.  

I typed a letter to go on the inside of the box, just explaining how the boxes worked, and praying that they ladies would continue to use them and know God was always listening.  The concept behind the box is that you can write out your prayers, long or short, then place it in the box, and give it to God.  You can write down anything and everything.  If something is troubling you, when times are hard, when life is rough, you can write it all down, and give it to God and let Him take care of the rest.  Or when you want to thank God for the blessings in your life, when you have moments of joy, you can write those down too, and give it to God.  You can then let the closing of the box symbolize you giving the request to God, and then you don't have to worry about it anymore.  When your box is full, you can do anything you want to with the letters.  You can save them, and have them serve as a reminder of God's love and answered prayers; or you can throw them away to serve as a reminder that they have been given to God.  Just let the box serve as a visual reminder to you that God is always there and He is ready and willing to listen to you at any time, day or night, in good times and bad. 

This would be a fun project to complete in a bible study group, or with a Sunday school class.  The supplies are cheap (the boxes were only about $2), and to decorate you can use anything!  The items I used were things I had, from the Dollar Tree, or from the clearance section at Hobby Lobby.  So, these definitely can be completed without spending lots of money.  Cheap and easy, just my style.  :)