Prayer Walk

We joined with three other churches to do a prayer walk in the neighborhood this afternoon after church. Well, one church did not show up - and two people were from Karl Road and the other 6 were from Epworth UMC. Not a big turnout.

This was the second prayer walk in the neighborhood. The first one had 14 people - this one had eight.

We started at 12:30 with a prayer and walked down Karl Road, a pretty busy street and turned onto Robin Road - went the length of it and then turned around and walked back. We walked in silence. This area is a place where there is a lot of crime.

The area on Robin Road is full of apartments. The first thought I had seeing all those apartments was ....why do we have so few people come to our church? My gosh, there were thousands of people that lived in those apartments. Do they go to church? If so, where?
And second thought - are we supposed to come to them in some way? Always as church we are inviting people to come to us.....how do we reach out? Darned if I know!

Other thoughts. I asked Dawn who walked with me and she said that she saw all these symbols.
Broken glass= broken lives; dried grass = thirsty lives; trash = neglect. Etc. Etc. That was certainly there. As well as occasional flowers and a butterfly that moved around us at times.

My prayers were always visuallizing angels on the tops of the buildings and lights coming in to the windows as I prayed for blessing, peace, protection and love for all who lived in these places.

And this experience is like every prayer experience that I have ever had. Is this doing anything? What difference does it make? And always, the only answer I have come up with is that we are called to be faithful.

Maybe the best part of it on a personal level was walking in silence. I am getting to this place of loving silence even though I run away from it. It was not actually silent because of traffic and people sounds - but I could - in not talking and not having people chattering - feel some expression of God's presence.

I will do this again.