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The origins of

Prayer for My Love

 

Prayer for My Love is an instrumental piece for harpists playing at the easy to intermediate level. It is ideally suited to weddings because of the love that is expressed in its melody. Tender throughout, it also carries hints of passion in its rhythmic center section. Harpist Alexa Williams recently wrote that she hopes that as a wedding piece, Prayer for My Love “will become a classic, like Canon In D.”

 

However, Prayer for My Love didn’t originate in a wedding but in a healing. When harpist/composer Shirley Starke learned that the man she had loved for years had metastatic cancer of the liver, which is almost always fatal, she set out to storm Heaven for a miracle. She fasted until she was emaciated and her friends forced her to stop. She knelt at the Tabernacle of her church every day for about six months, praying for a miracle, until her knees were bruised and calloused from the sheer length of time spent on a kneeler that was carpeted but not padded. One evening after leaving the Tabernacle, she put her prayer into music.

 

The healing happened: her beloved was healed completely of his cancer. He then broke her heart by ending all contact with her and marrying a socialite, with whom he spends his time taking romantic vacations to tropical resorts. Shirley, once a prolific poet and composer with over 400 songs to her credit, has not been able to write original music since writing Prayer in 2001, although she continues to arrange music for the harp.

 

The music itself has become more and more popular as a wedding piece. It was intended as an instrumental piece from the beginning, and the lyrics were simply another form of private prayer. They are given here, not for use, but merely as a matter of interest.

 

Prayer for My Love

By Shirley Starke

 

Lord of the earth, Lord of my heart,

Look on him I love, I pray.

Your blessing give that he may live:

Gently touch and heal him, I pray.

Time cannot change the beauty and might

Of the love You placed within my heart.

Please do not take him so far from my sight,

But let us join and never part.

 

Lord of the earth, Lord of the stars,

If my love will not love me,

I’ll offer up all of my pain:

Save him, Lord, and let him go free.

Lord, You have said, if we ask You for bread,

You will never, never give a stone.

Let him be healed, and if it is Your will

I will live my life for You alone.

 

Lord of the earth, Lord of the stars,

Look on him I love, I pray.

Your blessing give that he may live:

Gently touch and heal him, I pray.

Gently touch and heal him, I pray.