prayer week update: #2

a few typical moments in a week of non-stop prayer...

-- waking up on monday morning,

having spent the night sleeping in a sleeping bag in the upper room of 25 portugal place (for "i would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the LORD" Ps.84), i wandered down to the prayer room -- and was astonished and delighted to find that the walls, which had been covered in blank white paper, had whilst i slept been covered in painted prayers and bible verses -- in at least three sets of different handwriting.

-- monday evening ~10pm, and according to the website there is one person signed up to be praying in 25 portugal place.

but in reality?

downstairs in the prayer room there are four students (involved with SPEAK) interceding about international issues of injustice and praying that righteousness would roll down like a never-ending stream; upstairs in the upper room there are about a dozen more (connected through Manna) studying the Bible to see what it has to say about study, and then joining together in worship; meanwhile in the kitchen, two Holy Trinity students prepare to lead their 'Risky Living' small group the next day.

a couple of hours later, and every member of each one of this eclectic mix of groups Christians has disappeared, and although the website claims that two people are signed up to be praying in the prayer room, no-one has showed up. and so i, in the house on door-keeping duty, take the chance to spend a most refreshing hour in the presence of the living God. and the next morning someone apologises to me for accidentally signing up on the wrong night.

-- tuesday 7pm,

at the prayer room with my daily supper of a few bread rolls and some (tinned!) fish, and two strangers come knocking on the door. their names are lucy and chinan, and they turn out to be from rugby, where they are involved with the Rugby House of Prayer, and being in cambridge on a matlab course for a few days they had googled 'cambridge house of prayer' and found our website. and oh, the encouragement of people you've never met coming alongside you to lift up to God in prayer the same burden that you are carrying.

-- tuesday midnight,

and the prayer room is filled with the excited rumblings of eighteen people gathered, eagerly about to go out into the streets of cambridge and bless any thirsty cambridge clubbers by giving them a free bottle of water as they came out of cindies. a quick briefing and time of prayer, and the first two teams head out onto the streets, while the other stays back to cover them in prayer. twenty minutes later and the teams cycle round, the pray-ers heading out, and half a dozen returning with stories of the variety of responses to their attempt to share the freely given love that God has given to us. and so it continues, until 3am, cindies having closed up shop, when we re-congregate to close in prayer and finally head to bed -- anticipating various interesting conversations the next morning as people in lectures say 'hang on, weren't you one of those people handing out water last night?'