The Front Porch of Vinings opened in 2015 by Vinings resident Lisa Rieves. Inspired by the old general stores of the South, the store prides itself on local convenience and friendliness, according to Rieves.
At the bottom of a hill sits Local Market, which opened in February 2018. It sells a variety of baked goods, to-go dinners, and specialty items like drip candles, wine and olive oil.
Up the hill from Local Market, visitors will find is the other retail that opened in 2015 and sells womenswear, accessories and hand crafted items.
But on the walk up, you’ll find this rusted, discarded chair with notecards tied to it. Flipping them over, you’ll see words like “prayers” or “blessings for.” It seems like a peculiar place to pray.
At the top of the hill, right at the corner of Paces Ferry Road and Paces Mill Road, is a garden overflowing with prayer notecards.
These prayers are tied on everything. From buckets to bushes, all the way up on light posts and tied to watering cans. All in various states of weathering and fading. But according to Alana Thibodeau, Front Porch’s retail manager, “They cards are waterproof and they won’t completely fade. God hears them no matter what.”
Atlanta, the Vinnings and The Front Porch occupy this space in the bible belt where there’s churches on every corner — where more megachurches are taking over the small local churches. This garden feels like a very intimate experience, one our modernized culture has seemed to get away from with the growing anonymity of worship.
Thibodeau said, “[Rieves] and her family established the Prayer Garden in February 2020. And we had no idea what was coming for that year. But all of us gathered together, hand-in-hand and blessed the cards.” Since then, hundreds of people from customers to passersby have stopped to put down a prayer and leave their mark on the garden.
Atlanta is predominantly Christian, but this space feels more religious than some churches in this area. The majority of these cards just have names, names that don’t have a person behind them that we all know. But someone in this major city cares for these three people.
There’s something to this prayer garden that feels different — a holy space in the middle of the hustle and bustle of a major city. And after everything we’ve all been through the past few years, it’s comforting to know that something, or someone, is praying for us.
