Wednesday 28 May 2014

Review of Prayer Walking

Noah writes:
 

7.5/10

For my first prayer walk, I decided to go somewhere different. Instead of walking where I live I went with a friend around the area where he lives. As I walked around I discovered places I hadn’t been to before. 

It was a very run down area and I spent most of my walk praying for the area and the people who lived there. I didn’t just pray for the town and the people in the houses but also for maybe stressed and troubled people. And for a bit of my walk I prayed for the people waiting at the bus stop in the pouring rain. 

It was kind of weird doing it with a friend: in a way it felt slightly awkward because I wanted to talk with him but he was praying, and he probably wanted to talk to me but knew I was praying. But it was nice too, because I knew someone else was praying for people and he was right there with me.

Then a few weeks later I tried this again in the area where I live, on my own. I got lost in a housing estate, which I guess was good, because there were places I hadn’t seen before and I realised there was a lot of the town I didn’t know about. 

There were some old people sitting reading so I prayed for them as I went past, that they have a happy life, and some children playing outside with a ball, so I prayed for them as well. There were also some builders who looked like they were having a rough time doing some building work, so I prayed that they were safe in their job and that God would look over them. At points where there weren’t individual people I prayed for the street or the houses I was passing - just saying ‘I pray for this street’.

It was quite nice: it felt much less selfish than praying sometimes does. I often pray for myself and for other people in countries that are in conflict or in times of need, but it was much nicer praying for people closer to home who probably still needed praying for.

 I would recommend doing it by yourself or with one other person, but probably not with a large group - thinking about doing it with my church youth group I think that would be weird, as we’d be walking round in a big group but not speaking to each other, which wouldn’t feel very sociable. 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment

We welcome your comments, especially if you have tried the week's exercise yourself! Give it marks out of ten, or just let us know what you think. Please be aware we may quote you if we ever do write this up as book!