Signs of God’s Presence: New book finds inspiration for prayer from Southeast Missouri geography

Sarah Geringer lives on the same square mile near Tilsit, Mo., where her ancestors first settled when they immigrated from Germany in the 1880s. She is the fifth generation to live there, and her children are the sixth. An author, blogger, speaker and artist, her roots in this region and admiring the geography of Southeast Missouri while taking walks inspired her to write her latest book about using the objects around her as prayer prompts. The book is titled “Hidden Manna on a Country Road: Seeing God’s daily provision all around us.”

“We can pray to God wherever we are, whenever we want. But there’s just something very special about getting out in nature and doing it while we’re walking,” Geringer says. “What I’ve discovered is, sometimes, I have to walk out a prayer. … It’s like I have to untangle a knot, and the best way to do it is to actually go on a walk and verbally process it with God.”

The book is divided into 40 short chapters that span the four seasons throughout a year, with approximately 10 chapters for each season. Each chapter reflects on an object Geringer observed and prayed about to receive deeper spiritual insight while on a walk near her home.

The idea for the book originated in 2021. During that time, Geringer had recently gotten a labrador retriever and started taking walks with her dog to see the sunrises and sunsets on two country roads near her home. It was then she discovered objects, plants and animals she hadn’t realized had been there her whole life. She says it inspired her prayer life in a new way.

Around the same time, she was also thinking about a name of God she’d read on a perpetual calendar she’d purchased in the 1990s: hidden manna. The verse referenced Revelation 2:17 in the Bible, in which God says that God will be “hidden manna” for people who are victorious in their faith. Geringer says she wanted to understand more deeply how God provided sustenance not only for the Israelites in the desert in the Old Testament through giving them manna each day, but also how God provides sustenance to people today.

To Geringer, “hidden manna” is “a sign and a symbol of God’s presence with his people and his provision for them.”

“I kind of went on a hidden manna hunt outside, and I thought, ‘I am going to actually look for physical manifestations of God’s presence and his provision,’” Geringer says. “When I opened my eyes, I just saw all this stuff out in nature that were signs and symbols and metaphors that I just hadn’t noticed before, even though I had lived here since 2004 in this house in the woods.”

For example, Geringer says an empty beer can she saw in a ditch prompted a reflection in the book on the ways alcohol has “been a wrecking ball in my life from before I was born.” Instead of being in a rage about it, Geringer says she used it as a way to pray for the addicts in her life and the other people who are addicts within this region.

On another walk, she observed a hawk with a snake in its claws, which prompted her to pray about the Old Testament story in which the Israelites seek healing by looking at a snake Moses put on a pole. Geringer says she writes in the book about the way “we have to look to God as our healer and our protector.”

In the book, she also reflects on the presence of a bridge along her walking route, a marker that is a turning point in her walks: She says she prays about her own life while walking to the bridge, and when she reaches it, she turns around and begins to pray intercessory prayers for others and praises.

Geringer’s hope for the book is that readers around the world will be inspired by the beauty and wonder of Southeast Missouri and that it will deepen readers’ prayer lives.

“I know that prayer can be intimidating to a lot of people, and I hope the book demystifies prayer for them and that they will find all kinds of things to inspire their prayers that they never even considered as manna for their prayers before,” Geringer says.

__Want to read “Hidden Manna on a Country Road?”__

The Kindle version published Sept. 5, and the paperback version published Nov. 1. Visit sarahgeringer.com to find local bookstores stocking the book, and meet author Sarah Geringer at her book signing at the St. Vincent de Paul Christmas Bazaar, 1912 Ritter Dr. in Cape Girardeau, Sat. Nov. 12, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.