Gifts given freely

Edith joined a house group I was leading one Lent. The Course was about Prayer and in one session we were encouraged to pray aloud for people and things that concerned us. We were given a week’s notice and just before we were due to meet again, Edith sent for me. She told me that she would have to miss the next session.
She had an anxious and slightly guilty look so I probed a bit deeper. She was scared of praying aloud because she had nothing to pray about. ‘You see, I’m not very spiritual’. I think what she meant was that she wasn’t very pious.
She thought that people had to put on a very posh or sugary voice when they pray believing that you have to speak to the Almighty in a certain way. Edith was too down to earth for that.
So I asked her how her daughter was. She was going through an horrendous divorce. Edith told me all her anxieties and how she hoped God would strengthen her and be with her and the children and so on and so on. At the end I said to her, ’say ’Amen!’’ She asked me what I meant. ‘Well’, I told her, ’you’ve just been praying about your daughter for ten minutes so you might as well say ’Amen’. Edith was no fool and she got it right away. ‘I have, haven’t I?’ 
‘Now come to the group and do it there again, amongst your friends.’ That is exactly what she did and everyone present promised to pray for her daughter. I saw a life lit up with new joy.

Edith didn’t join the rota for the intercessions. She had a much more important job in the church. She made all the purificators and corporals and albs and surplices. She was an amazing seamstress and everything she made for God’s service was made prayerfully. Every stitch carried it’s own moment of praise. ’It’s important to give God the best’ she would say. ‘After all, look what he’s given to us in Jesus. He’s given us so much love and grace. We must give our all to God!’

Of course, as she reminded me, she wasn’t spiritual!
Yet she gave her all to God and that day when she prayed aloud in that Lent Group, she gave a bit more. And it made her happier than ever.  I might just have forgotten to say that she not only made our albs and other linen, she also washed and ironed them! She lots more vestments for the Church—but she wasn’t spiritual!

As we Christians celebrate Pentecost, it’s people like Edith who come to mind because she is an example of those Christians who just use their gifts happily for God and actually don’t realize that they are doing anything more than returning to God the love they have received from Him.
They never think about themselves. They lose themselves in the service of God and others.
I think Edith was one of the most spirit-filled people I’ve ever met.

[Mr G. Pentecost Sunday 2026]