Decorate Your Favourite Area in Your Home With a Prayer Garland

Prayer is a wonderful way to bring the true spirit of the season to the hearts and mind of all who visit your home this season.

Prayer is simply lifting our hearts and minds to God.  There are many different purposes and methods of prayer, each bringing to light our thoughts about our Lord and the intimate relationship we have with Him.  During Advent we are called to prepare ourselves in mind, body and spirit to receive and rejoice in the birth of our Lord.  One way to rejoice in the hope of our Saviour is to pray for others.  We could pray in thanksgiving for their presence in our lives, in supplication for their needs, in contemplation for their friendship, services, or talents that God has allowed them to share with us or we could even pray for heavenly eternal rest for a loved one who has passed away.

As we get busier with tasks of the Advent and Christmas season, we can often forget to pray for others.  We remember our own families because we see them daily, but we may forget others who may really need our prayers or who have helped us throughout the year like our pastor, fellow parishioners or homeschooling families, or even our neighbours who have mowed our yard or helped shovel the snow for us once in a while. Why not create a prayer garland to help remind you and your children to pray for others.  It is very simple to do, it looks very festive and it can be a great gift to others.

To complete this project simply trace and cut out the right and left hands of various members of your family on green and red construction paper.  Cut out multiple sets of each persons hands.  Overlap and glue into place forming an evergreen style garland.  Affix to the wall with putty, a thumbtack, or rings of removable masking tape or painters tape. 

Now for the stars.  You can either use stars that you trace onto yellow construction paper or use the Star of David template we provided below and have the kids simply colour them in; then cut them out.  They will be affixed to the garland once it is put up on the wall. 

Write the name of someone you wish to pray for on each individual star.  Using red ink or green ink to write on the yellow stars stands out quite well. 

You will see in the photo above that we added a few embellishments to make the project even more festive - some ribbon and a few honeycomb paper bells.  Feel free to be creative.  You may decide to make a full garland or just parts as we have in our sample picture.

Note:  If you put your garland around a window in your kitchen and you tend to cook a lot, the heat and condensation from the kitchen will cause the finger "needles" from your hand prints to curl a bit adding a very nice effect.

If you decide to place your garlands in the dining room or kitchen, you may even want to adopt praying for your "Christmas Stars" when you gather for meals.

We hope this helps you to keep a bit more relaxed and Christ-centered during this wonderful season. 

Click Here to download the Star of David template page.

Prayer can be that gift of hope we all so desperately need in today's modern world. Perhaps you may want to reflect today on John 1:5

"And the light shineth in darkness: and the darkness did not comprehend it."

Blessings,

That Resource Team