Local author discusses book of prayers

Robert Swaim Flowers was born a Renaissance man. 

At the tender age of 6 years old, he was already creating tangible versions of the stories swirling in his head. 

“I’ve had artistic talents since I was a small child, and those talents have grown with the years,” Flowers said. “I would create my own books, sewing them together, illustrating them with pictures and composing the stories.”

That creative foundation was punctuated by other artistic passions, including musical study of the violin and woodwinds, along with a passion for sculpting.

By the time Flowers reached high school, he was conducting church music and providing choral direction for his rural church.

The culmination of these experiences led Flowers to enroll in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. After a year of ministry, during which time Flowers served as assistant pastor, music minister and choir conductor, Flowers felt called to merge these passions with medicine. 

“All of this art work no doubt helped direct me into the specialty of plastic surgery and the extra years of training it required,” Flowers said, describing his six-year surgical residency at the Cleveland Clinic. “Contemporary graduate art work at the Cleveland Academy of Art accompanied [my residency], as did singing with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, with George Szell and Robert Shaw.”

Flowers said he credits these and similar experiences for influencing his bedside manner, an important component of which was to pray for each patient before they underwent surgery. 

The practice was also woven tightly into the cultural fabric of Flowers’ own family, including his wife Susan and their two sons.

“Children’s prayer became very important to our family,” he said, noting his own admittedly failed attempt to write children’s prayers himself.

“A German immigrant friend had asked that I be godfather to her daughter,” Flowers said. “She asked why there were no prayers for children in the English language and when I told her there were, sharing ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ she broke in and said, ‘I told you there are no prayers in English for children!’”

Taking his friend’s point, Flowers said he agreed to create some. Pulling no punches, Flowers’ immigrant friend, who holds a Ph.D. in children’s literature from Stanford, immediately rejected them, describing the works as “awful.”

“I prayed over the matter, and it came to me that I shouldn’t be making up the prayers, but rather should be asking God to give them to me, which He did,” Flowers said.

For Flowers, the process has been an intimate exercise of faith. He recalls waking up in the middle of the night with certain aspects of the prayer top of mind, and writing down as much as he could remember, only to return to them later the next day, “when the prayer’s essence would somehow return, and allow the essence of finishing.”

In 2014, Flowers took what he refers to as his “prayer stack” and published the book, Thank You for the Morning Light: Prayers for Children.

The book is a collection of prayers received by Flowers as well as contributions from friends and colleagues.

“One of my simplest favorites was chosen by a retired Swedish missionary,” Flowers said. Over the course of their friendship, Flowers’ children’s prayers were shared with the missionary, who was so moved by them, he sent them home to relatives.

On one of their many visits, Flowers was humbled to see the missionary, then hospitalized following heart surgery, in a recovery room with the following prayer written on the wall in giant letters:

“Beside my bed

I kneel and pray

That You will come

Close by and stay,

And be my Light

To show the way…

To Godly love

And Godly play! Amen”

The prayer, “Be my Light,” is found on page 33 in Flowers’ book. 

For more information about Thank You for the Morning Light: Prayers for Children, visit morninglightprayers.com.