Saturday, June 03, 2006

Day #9 Prayer Update

THE HEALING OF CHRIST

What a treat last night at Covenant Presbyterian Church! Another great evening of the Spirit guiding the Church into a focused time of intercession for the city. Each of our morning and evening prayer times over the past few days has been unique and different and last night was no excetion to this. Pastors Rob and Adelle Langworthy prepared a special prayer time for us that involved a contemplative environment by displaying revolving slides of creation images, having us sit still in rows quietly before the Lord and by adorning the cross area at the front of the chapel with numerous candles. The ambiance of the room alerted our senses to the presence of the Lord in our midst.

In addition, our prayer time was punctuated with Taize chanting in Latin. A young woman named Michelle from their local church joined us and she served as our Cantor (soloist). She would use her "angelic" opera voice to affirm our prayers throughout the evening. After each of us offered up prayers she would sing in Latin the following phrase: "Ex-au-di-nos, ex-au-di-nos" ("Lord, hear our prayers; Lord, hear our prayers").

At other times during the hour we as the "assembly" would be taught a phrase in latin to sing (the "ostinato" chant) and while we would sing that repetively she would sing other Sciptural texts in Latin over our chanting. The journey over the hour of prayer was nothing short of amazing.

In the midst of our prayers for the healing touch of Christ to be felt I was specifically struck with some of the things that we were praying for: worldwide over 250,000 young people are infected every month with HIV and over 30,000 children die daily from preventable diseases. Lord, have mercy... How can we (I) sit still any longer?

Off to All Saint's Anglican Church facilities tonight!! Can't wait!!

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