I think I talked about Prayer Walks last night, which Mark Spence organised under The Wee Prayer Room Thing.
I was only able to do the first one and the last two – round the City Centre, out the Newtownards Road and back along the Albertbridge Road, and the last one on Saturday night round Stormont.
Things that struck me as I went round were:
- Round the Newtownards Road area, all the memorials to those killed by Republicans, to the loyalist terror groups, and being British in general
- Round Stormont, it just hit me how complacent the middle class are
I walked round, looking at the murals and the memorials, including the one at Freedom Corner (opposite Templemore Avenue). I could cry, but on Friday night all I did was say “What have we done, Lord?”
What have we done?
We’ve taken a legitimate political aspiration and made it into our God. How do we know God is for Ulster? Is he for either side?
Ultimately, by turning God into a political football, we are certainly blocking God from moving in power in our lives. How crazy are we!
Meantime, suburban East Belfast where hardly a shop is open past 6pm, not even the video stores, sleeps on in complacency. Even after the Global Day Of Prayer, with thousands of people in Stormont, it sleeps.
And all we can do is cry out, as did the apostle Paul:
“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
Or as Kathryn Warren yelled at the end of her prayer at the Global Day Of Prayer, COME ON.
Revival will form a regular theme here.