Praying Small to Learn to Pray Big

    As I arrived at WeWillGo, I could already feel the prayerful presence. Crunching through rocks while the prayer went on with linked hands, I let out a happy sigh and felt my anticipation rise. For a beautiful half hour, the one hundred or so of us gathered came before God, truly "putting ourselves in the offering plate."
    After the last amen, we received instructions, divided up into groups, accepted a handful of chapters to read from the Holy Book, were handed a sheet with specific prayers to pray, and got sent out to the streets of Jackson, Mississippi.
    Okay, explanation time. The idea was to read the entire Bible in an hour, to this city where you can physically see the need for the Word. Honestly, I was a little bit hesitant when I first heard what I was going to be doing. I mean, reading the Bible when no one was listening? Reading the Bible when people driving by stopped to listen? That's pretty out-of-the-box stuff for this little white girl who quite enjoys The Box.
    But when I got myself situated on the side of a nearly empty road, took a preparation breath and started reading from Jeremiah, my words took on a power that I KNEW did not belong to me. The meaning behind the words that I was reading didn't matter too much to me. Just reading them was a cup of cold water not only for my spirit, but the city as well. I imagined the words reaching from Lamar Street up to the skies and blossoming, spreading far over the city, covering it with the love of Christ, changing as it bloomed.
   After a while, I handed off my worn pink and brown Bible, and started walking up and down the cracked asphalt, looking at abandoned, broken down houses. Growing up in "good" neighborhoods, I had never seen these sorts of buildings before: ones with burn marks on the ceilings from fires that homeless people had set inside the house to get warm; ones that had broken windows; ones that had overgrown lawns with beer bottles strewn all around; ones that quite possibly had been used for terrible acts of violence, prostitution, crack houses. Seeing them with my own eyes ingrained it into my brain: This really happens. This really happens a couple minutes from home. 
    But as I prayer walked, I began to see them with different, hopeful eyes. After all, the staff at WeWillGo has taken houses exactly like these and restored them into vessels for passing on the gift of grace. Why can't God reach down and redeem these, too?
    You see, he not only CAN. But he DOES.
    With the simple act of going out and babbling some written words on the street corners, many were blessed. People were stopped dead in their tracks by the word of the Lord; people heard the name of Jesus for the first time EVER; people learned how to pray; children stepped out of the protection of their parents into the eternal protection of their Father, to read and pray by themselves. The change was felt by all. 
    Coming back to the outdoors worship center, I was dared to pray bigger. Don't just pray for that house; pray for the street. Pray for Jackson. Pray for Rankin County. Pray for Mississippi. Pray for America. Pray for the world. Pray that God will save the whole thing!
    And he will.