Prayers for Every Occasion by Ellen Banks Elwell

Prayers for Every Occasion by Ellen Banks Elwell is a beautifully bound, pocket sized book, perfect to give as a gift.  This small sized book is adorned with vintage nature and bird illustrations.  This prayer book is like multiple prayer books in one volume.  Included are original prayers written by the author to address the ordinary as well as special occasions in life.  Also included are prayers that help the reader emphasize with others who may be enduring difficult times such as job loss, death and miscarriage.  The only issue I found with this  particular section of original devotions is that the devotions are not personalized.  For example, the devotional passages dedicated to miscarriage, grief and loss, refer to the experience of a friend or someone else.  It shares with the reader a suggested prayer or devotion to assist in someone else's grief or loss. For those readers enduring their own  personal grief and loss, or miscarriage or unemployment,  the author does not focus on  how to deal with one's own individual grief.  The perspective provided by this book, would make this book of prayers more appropriate to assist the reader in supporting others who are going through difficult trials in life.

The next sections focus on biblical excerpts or prayers adapted from the bible.  Passages of the bible are arranged topically, making it easy for the reader to correlate a  bible passage into a prayer time.  This part of the book is also a good introduction to the bible for those readers that might not be familiar with bible reading.   The last section contains classic religious and Christian prayers.  This portion of the book exposes the reader to a wide diversity of prayers from a variety of time periods and a variety of denominations.   As a whole, this unique book has a lot to offer and will appeal to readers of multiple churches.  As a blogger for Tyndale I received a copy of this book for the purpose of writing this review.