Prayer is bringing hope, healing wounds, and transforming lives in some of the most troubled places in the world. From Bulgaria to Rwanda, Congo to Myanmar, my wife Jill and I have the opportunity to talk with many different people who suffer from poverty, war, oppression, hunger, disease, and sexual violence. Consistently, we meet students, community leaders, and pastors who are clinging closely to God in the midst of seemingly overwhelming problems and pain. They tell us that through prayer, they find peace and strength that they cannot access otherwise.
In 2008 Jill and I founded Faith, Hope and Love Global Ministries with a vision of better equipped, spiritually vitalized leaders serving Christ in significant positions of influence throughout the world. As ordained clergy with experience in the parish, teaching in seminaries, and authoring numerous books on spiritual vitality and leadership, we initially thought that the focus of our work would be on teaching. Yet it soon became apparent that theological students, pastors, and community leaders in our week-long intensive courses wanted and needed more than new ideas and methods.
Almost everyone we meet wears their weariness in their posture or looks back at us through tired eyes. Their faces are often creased with lines etched by fear and anxiety -- be they from years of tribulation or a single night of horror. Children and violated women sometimes just stare with hollow expressions, emptied of life by unspeakable atrocities witnessed or experienced personally. Even the most hopeful and motivated individuals have trouble masking their quiet despair and resignation to overwhelming forces beyond their control.
In such circumstances, what's needed is something far deeper than just theories and practices that work well in safe environments with ample resources. Our students are hungry for practical teaching, but they also want to know and experience God in the midst of their suffering. Here is where prayer has become so important to them and to the work we are doing with them.
We now set aside 10 percent of our leadership training courses for sessions on prayer, often introducing labyrinth prayer as a tool for seeking God in a sacred space. The labyrinth precedes Christ but was adopted by Christians in various patterns, for uses that we cannot fully recover. The most well-known European labyrinth was built directly in the nave of the Chartres Cathedral in France at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The twisting and turning pattern on the ground resembles a maze but holds no tricks or obstacles. Walkers traverse a single path that takes them to the center, where one will usually pause for extended prayer.
Wherever we go, if possible, Jill will build a labyrinth, using whatever materials are available, and lead prayer walks as part of our curriculum. In most every context, none of the program participants has ever heard of a labyrinth. Yet, in every setting, those who walk enthusiastically welcome the new method for prayer that transcends language, culture, and denominational particularities.
The results are consistent and powerful. Most talk about experiencing peace. Many feel joy or overwhelming gratitude. After one walk in Butembo, in the middle of a Congolese war zone for the past fifteen years, several pastors and students returned to the classroom ahead of the rest. As I approached the door, I heard them singing together about the love of God in Swahili. Before someone translated their words for me, I could feel the depth of their peacefulness and heartfelt adoration. They had received more from praying on the labyrinth than I could have ever taught them or facilitated through group discussion.
In Myanmar, the reports from the walkers were similar. One woman called the labyrinth her "prayer village." A young lecturer in the seminary was able to quiet his mind and focus for the first time in two years during his first walk. When another found new strength to face her seemingly hopeless situation, she told us, "This is the first time I believe that things can change."
Routinely, the experience of walking the labyrinth serves as a metaphor for life -- a mirror for what the walkers are experiencing elsewhere. By winding back and forth along the single pathway to the center and back out again, many gain insight into themselves or their circumstances. Some experience new motivation for their work or renewal in their relationship with God.
For example, one construction worker at HEAL Africa compound (Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo) said, "When I prayed the labyrinth, I realized that even though there are many challenges, and different things happen, the important thing in the spiritual life is to keep going. Perseverance is necessary." A young man in scrubs told Jill, "As I walked, I saw the way was long and very difficult. Then I realized that what needed to change was my attitude. The way was long, but I had the possibility of choosing what I thought about it." After another walk, a woman waiting for a fistula repair surgery after being raped, wanted us to know, "This is the path of my life. I am walking to God."
They walk, they pray -- without liturgy, with few instructions -- and they find God. Some rediscover Jesus and find great encouragement from his experience of suffering and message of hope. Most simply sense God's presence or hear a pertinent word from the Holy Spirit that comforts, encourages, or strengthens them to carry on.
Prayer, then -- especially labyrinth prayer -- has been transformative for many who are suffering in ways that many of us cannot fully fathom. In prayer, they are seeking comfort, healing, guidance, and strength to face the daunting task of creating and developing solutions to their country's problems and challenges. They cannot fulfill their callings on their own, and they know it.
At Faith, Hope and Love Global Ministries, we are trying to take our guidance from what the pastors and leaders are telling us is most meaningful and needed. We teach, train, coach, and, perhaps above all, seek to help those who are suffering to connect to God, who gives them far more than we could give them on our own.
For more information on the labyrinth and Jill's books on labyrinth prayer, see www.jillgeoffrion.com. For more on my books, which form the basis for the courses we teach, see www.spirit-ledleader.com.
Follow Rev. Timothy C. Geoffrion, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/GeoffrionTim
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"Prayer, then -- especially labyrinth prayer -- has been transforma
I did it simply on my own, with no remarkable insight or feeling of comfort, no transforma
Two hands at work does more good than a thousand clasped in prayer.
Nothing fails like prayer.
Appraise the Lord: Tax church property
Fine, go ahead and pray; just keep rowing to shore.
Faith without works is nothing. Works without faith is still pretty good.
Humanity without religion is like a serial killer without a chainsaw.
The philosophe
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This one wasn't on a bumper sticker but I still love it:
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "No, not if you did not know."
Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
-- Annie Dillard, 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'
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Can't leave out Ambrose Bierce --
"Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedl
-- Ambrose Bierce
Good night, all . . .
"Ah, Truth," he said.
"Here, give it to me," the devil said. "I'll organize it."
Delusional
All the things they think a god is doing for them they are really doing for themselves
However, I've also seen wiser, deeper, more thoughtful Christians respond differentl
Bottom line, these people, even when they have suffered greatly, make a decision to live by trust in God and to look for ways to serve God and others through their ordeal. Trust and prayer open to them new possibilit
God is not too busy to win a ball game, but he's way too busy to stop a tsunami. He allows a three year old to succumb to starvation
I can assure you that God is not necessary for any enlightenm
Nothing gripes me more than the capacity of the religious to give God credit for so much, but blame for so little. Instead they'll "blame the victim" for some infraction of some sort. It's never God's fault, it's YOUR fault because you are an imperfect "sinner". Your god has a foundation of sand, and like sand will eventually disappear, like the wind-blown sand dunes in the desert. To be covered, even more-so by the sands of time.
a rose garden. Bad things happen to good people.
Bible states "to each is appointed a time to die."
Doesn't mean everybody will lay down and die quietly.
Satan rules the world....G
Death and illness are tough things to deal with.
Only God knows why these things happen and they are for an expected end when he lets them happen.
We are heartbroke
injuries..
It is a mystery the way God works. We don't have the answers. I only know that I would rather have my faith in God and everlastin
There is an empty place in our hearts only God can fill.
There is peace and joy that comes with that even when times
are terrible and devastatin
through good and bad times is our peace.
What else do we have when life overwhelms us.
Prayer and forgivenes
to survive this world.
The day a man with no leg prays for a new one and it magically grows back, I will convert to Christiani
I always imagined that If God existed and really held the power of life and death in his hands, he would really be cruel to ignore the fervent and anguished pleas of those who suffer and actually want to die, yet target for untimely death infants and youth who have barely started life, and those who show much promise or are credits to the society.
I prefer to accept that these events are random, like cancer that may, or may not go into recession, and have nothing at all to do with any decisions made by a celestial controller
Just imagine that if prayer were a workable concept, why would a just and merciful God answer the prayer of say, a sportspers
At best, prayer is a placebo for the deluded.
Nothing is more insulting and disgusting than hearing the one person that survived the accident say that he/she had an angle looking over him or that God somehow save him due to a prayer. So God ignored everyone else.
What about those thousands of people in the WTC on 9/11? I bet they were praying. Was God busy helping a pop star sell millions of recorded so she could thank him at the music awards?
The answer when God does nothing, when thousands die before our very eyes, when a city is left in rubble after an earthquake
Oh, you will insist, we help these poor wretched souls, with medicine, schooling, etc., etc. It is not truly help unless you do good for its own sake, not with hidden agendas. Don't tell me you're being altruistic
I've heard of some missions that withhold help from those who won’t convert or accept the dogma. I don't know how factual that is, but it wouldn't surprise me. I have to say I saw an actual example of that on the news, right in my home town, of Chicago. A large Christian organizati
No there isn't.
If God hears all prayers why does he ignore most of them? I insert the caveat here that I don't believe he answers any of them, the rational answer to this being that he doesn't exist to hear them. Why would a merciful, loving God allow such suffering and sorrow by his creation? Is it "A Test of Faith?" "The Lord works in mysterious ways?" The Lord's purpose is beyond our understand
I have stated a couple of times in other posts that an omniscient
If you extrapolat
What sort of sick game would this be?