Kirk and I traveled to the Pacific Northwest for a wedding a little over three years ago, and before we flew back home, we had one full day to explore the area. So we trekked over to Whidbey Island, off the coast of northern Washington State, and spent the day there.

While we were exploring the island, we stopped the car overlooking the coast in one particular area, and Kirk got out of the car. When he got back in the car, he had a large, smooth, gray stone in his hand, which he handed to me.

This trip was happening just before I was going to begin a 3-month summer of solitude dedicated to the study of nonviolence. And this stone, we both knew, had something to do with that.

It was a prayer rock in some way.

When we got home from the trip, I placed the stone on top of a Trinity fixture, which you see pictured above, which sits in a corner of my desk. I placed the stone there and just sat there looking at it, letting it be a kind of offering to God.

It was the offering of the summer of solitude about to begin and whatever words might emerge from it.

It was the offering of my trust in God for those three months and their result.

It was an offering of acknowledging that my doing what I was about to do in those three months — and anything I did as a result of them — was simply a response to God’s invitation in my life in the first place.

Objects can be offered up as prayer.
Have you ever experienced something like this?