Prayer Vigil

The committee which I chair at our church just finished sponsoring a project called a “40-Hour Prayer Vigil.” The concept was simple. The time between 3pm on Good Friday and 7am on Easter morning is forty hours. Members of the congregation were asked to “claim an hour” to pray.

While the project was simple, and certainly not a novel idea, it was a unique experience for me, in several ways:

1. It was a project that required prayer. I understand that every project we do in church requires prayer, but I’ve never tried to meet that requirement before this one. If you have ever been on an Emmaus walk, then you hopefully had the feeling that the entire weekend was surrounded by prayer. To try to give a taste of that feeling to those who volunteered to pray meant that prayer was required. I had to ask people to pray (which is new to me), and I tried to support it with prayer. Amazing things happen when you pray. I’ve felt the hand of God in other projects I’ve been involved with at church, but never to this extent.
   
2. It was a project that required release of control. This is something that I did not anticipate. Prior to the start of the Prayer Vigil, I had to let go – and I know this is a cliché – and let God. I’ve never had a project start before that not only did not require my presence, but for which my presence would be a hindrance. I had to “leave it alone.” This is going to sound very goofy, but it’s my blog, so I’ll be goofy if I wanna – there was a time on the drive home from work Friday evening of mild grief – letting go of it, and – really – letting go of the control of it. It was very strange to go to my son’s track meet that evening knowing that a project I had worked on was underway at church, and that I wasn’t there – and shouldn’t be there.
   
3. It was a project I wasn’t sure would work. I wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested in participating. I thought a few people would sign up to pray, but I had my doubts about whether we could fill 40 hours.
   
4. It was a project that had unexpected outcomes. Our youth Sunday school teacher invited her students to join her during her hour of prayer. It turned into a great experience for all of them. On Saturday evening, several of the Emmaus people at our church got together to share an hour of prayer – certainly an unexpected blessing. Another blessing – we asked people to serve as prayer hosts during the hours of the vigil for which the church was open – just to be a presence in the church while someone else prayed. For me, what I thought would just be a quiet time in the church to get some work done turned into time in the garden, keeping watch. Who knew?

So what happened? All forty hours were claimed by someone, and some hours were claimed by more than one person. All together, 46 people participated, and 64 hours were spent in prayer. There was a real commitment by several members of the church to make this work – to fill in whenever help was needed – to make sure that the project was a success.

Funny story – My hour of prayer was 5-6am on Sunday morning. I set my alarm, but I forgot to turn it on. God woke me up at 4:59.

If you are searching the web for information regarding prayer vigils, our vigil had a blog, and the information I found is linked from that page. If you’re looking for advice – take a leap of faith, and do it. Pray. Be surprised. The whole endeavor has been a blessing and a joy to me.

Photo: Sky over the track meet on Good Friday