It's Time for To Start Baking! Prayer

Here's a prayer I wrote as I start baking for Christmas tonight:

God of all creation, who has created us as beings who yearn to shape and mold our world for good, I begin it again tonight..another season of Christmas baking, early, this year, because of my former husband's 50th birthday this weekend, and the Saint Nicholas party in two weeks.

Thank you for people for whom to bake; for the resources I need in order to purchase ingredients; for years of baking experience through trial and error; for recipes from Mother and magazines; for a great new kitchen in which to bake (an upper AND a lower over...count them, 2!!) and the energy to do this thing I enjoy and which brings others enjoyment as well.

I pray beginning tonight:

to continue to bake, but not so much that I grow too tired;

that my mind and memory will not betray me ("did I already put in the baking soda or not?")

and mostly that this process of cookie and candy making--from making lists of ingredients to buy all the way until the last cookie is eaten or given away--be a sweet offering of praise to you. In Emmanuel's name we pray, Amen.