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Up, up, and away
A few weeks ago at the weekly homeschool group I direct, one of the families shared a creative way they make prayer “real” for their little kids. They take a piece of paper, write their request on it, and attach it to a helium-filled balloon. As they release the balloon into the sky, they say a prayer for that need.
Over the lunch break, this family passed out balloons to all of the other families so we could offer our own “visual prayer” to the Lord. Now lunch for our group is an understatedly busy time for me, so I took the balloon they offered and proceeded to carry it around for about an hour-and-a-half before I even realized I had a balloon following me.
Eventually, I started to get asked if I planned to do anything with the balloon. My response: “I’m going to get to it later.” It was then that I realized I was doing with the balloon what I do with most of my prayers—carry them around thinking I’ll eventually do something with them.
How much easier would it have been had I just gone outside and released the balloon on the spot? How much easier might some of my burdens be if I would just let them go?
Psalm 141:1-2 says:
“I call to you, LORD, come quickly to me; hear me when I call to you. May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.”
I say I am dependent on the power of prayer, but the truth is I’m dependent on the power of me most of the time. I eventually turn to God in prayer only when I prove to myself that I really can’t do it. Thankfully, God’s faithfulness isn’t dependent upon my verbal requests; He knows my heart and meets the needs I don’t even know I have.
It was about 3 p.m. before I (along with my kids) actually took the balloon outside to offer up a request. By then the balloon was no longer floating as high as it was at noon, and I was mildly concerned it wasn’t even going to make it up in the sky at all. Still, we prayed and lifted the balloon up as high as we could, even giving it a punch to send it up a little higher. Imagine our surprise when it continued to lift—slowly, steadily, surely.
Did we need the balloon to make sure God heard us? No. But the visual reminder that God can take a half-deflated request and receive it as an expression of desperate dependence on Him was not lost on me.
I’m thinking about buying my own helium tank so I won’t forget.
back to top28 Comments to “Up, up, and away”
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I’d rather my children imagine the Lord right with them, listening. I think it’s sad to visualize a prayer having to travel a long way on a balloon to get to God.
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#4 Slowtospeak, I had a different thought about this in that I considered that when the balloon bursts that the prayer request will fall to earth and it will be found by someone else who will also lift it up to God in prayer. I guess I see the glass as half full!
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Cute story, but please don’t release any more rubber balloons into the atmosphere! Don’t you think seeing the balloon eventually come back down (maybe into wetlands) to be eaten by an animal would be a less meaningful visual metaphor for prayer.
Balloons are a serve choking hazard for birds and animals that end up with them in there mouths. Also, the balloon or part of it might literally clog an animals digestive system!
I’m sure it’s a little less moving to think that your “prayer” might be responsible for the death of a heron, dolphin, deer, owl, whatever.
It’s like putting a six pack of prayers into those drink ring-holders and letting them float out to God in the Ocean!
Also, you should check your local ordinances to make sure releasing balloons, especially if you have a big group, is not illegal.
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Redwal – but look at the bright side (for some) – it could land in the middle of a public middle-school sex-ed class, where the teacher could then put it to productive use by demonstrating the proper method of applying a condom.
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Well said, Buzzy.
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#7
LOL
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So I say something as basic as “Hey, how about we not litter, and we teach our kids to not litter too” and has has to be mocked with some ridiculous culture-war jab?
NJLawyer, how exactly was that “well said”? Did his comment describe something likely to happen? Did it make a valid point? Or did you just think the opportunity to make childish fun of education was well seized? And how?
I don’t think it was said. I think I framed my comment respectfully, and I think I had something meaningful to say. We really should not litter the planet with refuse that can choke and starve animals. We shouldn’t.
I don’t understand how a childish retort about condoms (on a completely unrelated topic) is “well said” at all. I really don’t.
And that you think there is somehow enough similarity between a balloon and a condom in function or form to sustain that punchline is sad. That’s not a funny joke, that’s depressing! You’re adults (presumably).
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Redwal 6, I had the same thought. I appreciate the desire to get the prayer to God and appreciate the idea but I have seen the other side and immediately thought of the litter problem. Interesting how we think.
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Mumsee,
I thought of it, too, but I checked out the comments cuz I was mostly just curious to see who would be the one to say it. Pretty predictable.
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I thought about that when I read it too, Redwall, but just a little Google research showed that this concern might be unfounded.
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Thanks, Mumsee.
Juliana, event companies and such that specialize in balloon releases use bio-degradable latex balloons, but you shouldn’t confuse bio-degradable with edible. They do pose a serious threat to animals.
And if you’re not getting the special balloons it doesn’t matter at all.
They say they freeze and explode into tiny bits, but 5-10% of them never make it high enough to do that. So if you’re church group release 20 balloons, 1-2 will come back down as animal threatening litter.
And litter is just plain bad. Even with the special balloon, that makes it high enough o freeze and explode…this activity still has the paper and the string falling back to earth as litter. The string is the bigger problem. It maybe fun to think that it will end up adorning the nest of some enterprising bird, but it’s much more likely some poor bird will become tangled or choke.
And I almost hate to ask but when we say “I appreciate the desire to get the prayer to God” we’re not actually suggesting that God is literally up in the sky are we?
Alternatives:
Try writing out your prays in the dirt or forming simple requests out of rocks in the garden. With kids, you can use it as a lesson about how Christians would make the mark of the fish in the ground to identify themselves to fellow believers in the days of persecution.
You should write them out on paper and burn them in the fireplace/camp fire sending the smoke and the metaphorical pray up to the sky.
You could plant a seed as your prayer and watch it grow. You can even get paper with seeds embedded inside it (this is en vogue with business cards) and write your prayer out and then plant it!
The point being, there are enough ways to pray that we should be able to do it without littering. It shouldn’t be up to the anti-litterbug crowd to provide that the world will end or something because of your balloon to get you to recognize the inherent moral obligation you have to not litter. You should just not litter!
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Redwal – lighten up, it was a joke. Try a little humor sometimes, it’s good for the heart.
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Ree: Pretty predictable.
I agree. Some people predictably see the bigger picture and express reasonable concerns in reasonable language, and other people predictably mock and ridicule them.
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Burn them in a fire? And on Earth Day, to boot. I can’t believe you’d suggest this.
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Conan,
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Ree, obviously I check with my local environmental agency to make sure there is no air pollution alert in effect anytime I pray! We anxiously watch all air quality predictors leading up to Palm Sunday. Of course you can always choose to pray with some earth friendly bubbles! There are even biodegradable soaps, but I haven’t tested them for bubble blowing.
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Also, (and this is kind of alarming) the world is actually running out of helium. Who knew? > http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html
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Redwal,
I think Ree was alluding to the fact that you would most likely be burning wood or oil…on earth day…
And that’s hardly alarming in respect to Helium.
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Redwal, I hadn’t heard that about helium. That doesn’t sound wise!
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Afraid those bubbles might have polluting phosphates. And the biodegradable ones–no bubbles, so they wouldn’t work. I suppose you could just speak your prayers, but that would increase your carbon footprint by releasing more Earth destroying co2. Hmmm. Looks like prayer is just a hazardous occupation no matter how you do it.
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Yeah, I don’t blame anyone for not paying attention when they passed that law in 1996. But it’s so weird right. You’d think that even in 1996 someone would foresee that non-renewable resources would rise in value. We did have rockets, and MRIs, and all these other technologies that depend on helium (again, who knew?) back then.
So far this seems to be just a few people raising this alarm. That could mean it’s less of a deal than that article makes it out to be or it could mean what anyone should suspect in the first place–it’s hard to get people to pay attention to helium related legislation.
Anyway, we’re 3 and half years away from the point where all of our reserves are supposed to be sold off, so I suppose we will either see the price of party balloons sky rocket in 2015 or we won’t!
Like Megan, I may also get a helium tank now. If only to save it for my retirement. Think about it, this guy says the real market value of helium should be $100 a party balloon. I think that means a big one, but still!
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I actually had the same concerns as Redwal. I’ve heard for quite some time that sending up balloons was not good for the environment.
I also had the additional concern that God is NOT in the sky and way up there, but rather right next to us. We can whisper and He will hear. We can think in our heads…and He will hear.
So, I’m actually a bit concerned by the activity both environmentally and theologically.
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Excellent article, Megan! I may never actually send up a balloon (whether for environmental or some other reasons), but I like the visual aspect it gives to prayer.
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I’m a little late here, but I agree with Redwal & Tammy.
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“God is NOT in the sky and way up there”, yes, and our prayers are NOT like lonely balloons ascending to an uncertain destination–and that, perhaps if we are lucky, maybe the man upstairs will catch them, and eventually float some flotsam back as an answer.
Rather, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.” (Hebrews 6:20)
This passage suggests a better object lesson/learning activity for prayer. Why not plan a visit to a marina, where a sailor might help children let an anchor down? They could feel the heaviness of the burden, the struggle to let it down, the way it feels as it drops weightless in the water–does God really hear?–scary uncertainty, maybe, until it meets the satisfying sureness of ground again. The ground of His promises.
An anchor seems a more apt metaphor than gas covered plastic, soon to be trash.
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