The Figurine He Couldn't Forget: The Story Behind "Prayer Changes Things

Sam Butcher always said his art was not his own. That the messages in the figurines came through him, not from him — that they were meant for the people who needed them, even when he had no idea who those people would be or when they would arrive.

The story of Prayer Changes Things is the clearest proof of that belief he ever received.

A young man was walking through a department store with a heavy heart. He was thinking about his divorce — the end of his marriage, the weight of what he was about to lose. He passed through the giftware section and slowed down in front of a small Precious Moments figurine.

Prayer Changes Things.

The Figurine on the Kitchen Table

The image stayed with him all the way home, through the rest of that day, and into the next. Eventually he went back to the store. He bought the figurine. He brought it home and placed it on the kitchen table — where his wife would see it when she came in.

When she saw it, she picked it up and cried with relief. And then he cried with her. And then, in the quiet of that kitchen, with a small porcelain figurine on the table between them, they held each other and promised to try.

Sam always credited what happened next to God, not to himself.

"Although I don't know your need — or if you have one — I do know that no cloud is too heavy that it can hide us from the face of He who cares." — Sam Butcher

This is what Sam meant when he said the figurines were a personal ministry to him. He had always felt he couldn't push. He wanted to be available for people without imposing himself on them. The art was his way of saying I'm here to people he would never meet, in moments he would never see, with a message that arrived exactly when it was needed.

Prayer Changes Things is one of the retired Original 21 figurines — a small piece of porcelain that, by Sam's own account, helped save at least one marriage, and almost certainly more.