Prayer on a Pin
“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” [Jeremiah 31:33]
Nearly everyone in the Western world has heard of “The Lord’s Prayer.” Even if they don’t remember all the words, most people would certainly recognize it. Here it is, from Matthew 6:9-13 (KJV): “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”
In the late 1800s, a convicted forger named A. Schiller spent many years at the notorious Sing Sing prison in New York. One day the guards discovered he had died in his cell. Among his personal effects were seven straight pins, six silver and one gold. They were typical-size pins, yet something about them caught the attention of one of the guards, so he examined them more closely with a magnifying glass.
To everyone’s amazement, under 500X magnification, they saw that Schiller had etched on the head of all seven pins the entire Lord’s Prayer with 65 words and 254 letters. The surface measured only 47/1000 of an inch in diameter. That’s pretty small. Of the seven pins, the prayer etched on the gold pin was flawless and a true masterpiece. No one is sure why there were seven. Perhaps he carried a silver one for each weekday and the gold one for the Sabbath.
Schiller had spent many years of his life placing the prayer on each pin, using a powerful magnifying glass and tools so small you couldn’t see them with your naked eye. It is estimated that it took 1,863 separate strokes to etch out each prayer. Before his death, Schiller went blind, perhaps partly due to the incredible eyestrain of his astonishing artwork. Though he’s long gone, the prayers on the pins remain.
Schiller etched a prayer on the head of a pin; the Bible tells us we should allow God to write His law in our own hearts. God promises to those who do so, “I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
