Sweet Hour of Prayer
Our church had a week of 24-7 continuous prayer this week. Members were encouraged to sign up for an hour during the week to come to church and pray. There was a special prayer room set up, beautifully decorated and well appointed with inspirational books and food and beverages.

I was a little resistant at first to signing up to be part of this. I didn't think I was actually capable of praying for an hour at a time, given that I have some ADD tendencies. That changed when a couple of women stood up during announcement time after last Sunday's church service and talked about how quickly their hours went. So I signed up.

The hour did go quite quickly. I was greeted by a young woman who prayed with me for a few minutes. I went around the room, first sitting, then kneeling, but then I found that I pray best while moving, and maybe that's because I'm so used to using part of my morning runs as prayer time. I found that I could concentrate better if I were walking around the room, and felt more grounded being barefoot. What I found remarkable afterwards was I really didn't want to stop praying. The next pray-er came to the room, and I had a short prayer with him, and I drove home. While driving home, I through of people I had forgotten about whom I would have liked to pray for, but then I thought "you're running 13 miles tomorrow, that's over 2 hours you have to pray tomorrow on your run." Some of it felt like therapy. I think I'm a bit more inspired to make prayer a bigger part of life. We pray at mealtimes and I pray on my morning runs, but up until this year, I've been kind of resistant about prayer and I dont' know why. Maybe I'll explore that later...
- posted by Kristen @ 7/30/2004 10:49:00 PM