When I first heard that we were doing a prayer month in China, which would involve mostly prayer walking, I was honestly worried.
Why was I worried? Well for one, it comes back to this comparison blog I wrote. I often allow what i assume people will think about me to influence my thoughts. So I thought. Well what if people don’t see this as mission work? What if people don’t like that I am doing this and think I should be doing something else? What if people only see the cool, fun side of what I’m doing and think it is all rainbows and butterflies. And what if this doesn’t even matter? (Which, let me add, prayer is a powerful thing that we as Chrisitans, myself included most of all, underestimate. It has the power to change even when we don’t get to see the fruit of that).
As my group was walking around, we were celebrating my squadmate, Jake’s, birthday and wanted to go to the bund for it. The whole time we were walking I was thinking about this prayer month and prayer walking. And while I was doing this I felt as if God was saying, “just pray, I want to have a deeper relationship with you and I want to have this country prepared for me. Just pray”. So I would pray as I felt the stirring while we walked.
We came to this park, I will try to add a picture I took of the view of the city from it.
Right when we got to this park we paused at the entrance. There were stairs leading up and beautiful decor out front. We watched the butterflies and the birds as they flew around and once we approached the stairs I knew God was telling me, “start praying”. So I did. As you go up these stairs you being to see a park that doesn’t really look like the entrance. And yet it captured me. There was beauty within the almost run down scene. On the ground you could see it riddled with cigarettes and grass/weeds growing in the cracks. But there was potential it felt like. It was a place where peace seemed to want to break through because when you were up there it seemed as if the city was blocked off. In the middle of this park looked was a fountain, it was not going but the structure was cool and almost reminded me of the bean in Chicago (ya know where everyone and their cousin takes pictures, myself included). It wasn’t even close to looking like it but that’s just what I thought of when I saw it. But it was surrounded by water and places where the fountain would shoot water out, and yet nothing was happening. It seemed lifeless and the water around it was murky and nasty looking. But when you got close and looked up at the city, the view was amazing. You could see the city and yet you were safe from it in this park that surrounded you, but didn’t remove you from the city. You were protected but still in it.
Isn’t that what God does for us? God gives us this place for peace within our busy life, filled with noise. The noise can be anything in life. A job you don’t like, a situation you are going through. Feelings about yourself that aren’t true. God gives us a place. A place where God is at the center. A beautiful entity at the center that when you get closer it gives you a whole new perspective on the city, the noise around you. But sometimes we let our park look like this one. We visit it so seldom that we don’t let the transformation power take us deeper. We see the pretty entrance and we get intrigued. But then we see the steps that lead up to it and we don’t want to take them. Because that means work. That means going to a place that might be difficult and out of our comfort zone. So we stop at the stairs. Not knowing that if we walked up these stairs we could see life, the city, from a whole different perspective. We could feel protection in a whole different way. And not knowing that the more you visit, the less the weeds and grass would start coming through the cracks to try to get you to turn around. To walk away before you even get to the center. We would also see that the work doesn’t end once we get up the steps. Our troubles don’t just go away. It takes repeated visits. It take being intentional. Eventually as we keep heading toward the center, the journey becomes more routine. The less the grass and weeds will make their way through the cracks. And the more we can just spend our time with a new perspective. This place is reflective of my prayer life and my journey with God.
It is also worth noting that while we were up there our squad leader said, “hey, let’s do a prayer walk right and just walk around and pray for this spot”. That was just conformation that God was calling us to a place to pray. For the reason, I do not know.
Prayer from my devotion:
Lord, thank you that as I look to the year ahead and all the potential challenges, opportunities and possibilities, the safest place to be is in you.
