Day 42 = Praying over the world (literally)

Being the creative sort that I am, I found that one of my favourite methods of prayer so far that I've tried is to pray over the world. This is slightly different to the prayer over the world I used earlier in lent, when I held a globe in my hands, and prayed for countries that were impressed upon me at the time, as I'd heard stories in the news and personally, which I felt really needed prayer. This time, I used my geographical location to direct which places I would pray for. 

As I travelled from London to China, via the United Arab Emirates, and was quite literally shaken by my journey of 14 hours (excluding the stop-over) due to heavy thunderstorms covering the whole flight path (apart from when we were over Iraq), I prayed for the countries below me as well as those featured on my flight, e.g. the nationality of the airline we were flying and the passport countries of those sitting adjacent to me on the long hauls.

As I was sleepy from the night flights we were taking, my time of prayer was not a concentrated 30 minutes but over an hour's worth of compiled shorter time intervals as I was grabbing my seat on the white-knuckle parts of the ride and enjoying the fantastic spread of fires, mountains and sea below. My time of prayer included thanksgiving for the wonderful world which God has created, and the diversity of unique scenic places that together form a fantastic patchwork of sights, cultures and memories. 

I felt that, as always - on extremely bumpy flights, my faith was deepened as I considered my mortality, and I became more excited about the days and years ahead, in our adventure on earth. Whatever the future would bring us, we can know the intimacy of the God who loves us and lovingly formed us, therefore intimately knowing all our weaknesses. We can trust God to direct our paths into whatever countries and situations we feel called to venture into. And we can hope for the knees-up in Heaven when all peoples from every tribe, tongue and nation gather in one place in a massive celebration.

I found my prayer time tougher to guard and revel in as I was tired and felt ill at times; it's not as easy as when I have a large amount of spare time in which to plan and reflect upon my prayer time. I've always found the challenge to pray in the midst of bustle and busyness quite difficult to achieve, but equally, the ability to pray at all times and in, almost, all places, has never been too distant. I may not feel that a particular prayer time has been as useful and memorable as another, but I find it very hard to neglect prayer completely.