Pray Without Ceasing

Categories: spirituality, swansea

Tags: Church

Date: 14 October 2005 15:19:57

Last night I went to the Pray Without Ceasing vigil at Sketty Meth. This is part of the Methodist church's year of prayer, which was initially sparked by the Methodist Youth Conference in 2003, which I attended. At this conference the young people of the Methodist church decided the 24/7 prayer movement should be encouraged, and not only did delegates resolve to organise 24/7 prayer events, but we also took a request to the big adult Methodist conference in 2004 to organise a national Methodist prayer event. Thankfully the adults in the Methodist church still felt prayer was important and organised a whole year of 24/7 prayer within the Methodist church.

Having seen and followed this movement from its roots, I was pleased to be able to attend the 6 hour slot my church had last night. My health visitor told me yesterday I could take today off, simply because i could not go along with her to the meetings she had. My initial thoughts were "YAY! I can stay up the whole night praying!!!" The evening began with a service at 11pm, the prayer vigil started at midnight and ran through till 6am, when another church in the circuit took over. We had optional 'gatherings' every hour, which made the night pass very quickly. There were a number of rooms which were each set up to stimulate prayer in different ways - a quiet room with calming music, candles, bibles and newspapers; a creative room with graffiti prayer wall, art materials and a 'missionary bridge'; a Labyrinth room for quiet mediation; musical instruments were available to express prayer through songs and chants; and of course the kitchen was always open for tea (or water), toast and fellowship.

I found the whole night amazing. I spent most of the night making a collage in the creative room, because I suspected I would fall asleep if I didn't keep myself busy. But I did ensure there was time and space for personal conversations with God. Its incredible how much stuff you can sort out in your head after a substainal, uninterupted quiet time with Him.

Many thanks to Richard and helpers for organising it, it was well worth staying up for, although I have to say I was glad to curl up in bed at 7am!