Kitty O'Shea's Prayer Group - August 14, 2006

Six regulars gathered at Kitty’s to pray today.

Several of us came bearing Scriptures and a sense of how God was speaking to us through them:

• Dick mentioned 2 Chronicles 7:14, which has been a motif for the Tremont Temple Noon Hour Prayer: if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. He also spoke highly of the Tremont gatherings and recommended David Manuel’s latest book (2004).

• Andrea brought the verse Deuteronomy 4:29 from a church retreat the previous weekend: “But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.” This was an encouragement that God was not to be found in the temple alone, as before, but was accessible to all committed seekers.
• David had been encouraged through reading Walter Bruegemann’s book Hopeful Imagination, about the prophets of exile and homecoming—Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah. In the midst of enormous turmoil, which resulted in the destruction of Judah and Judaism as then known, they spoke words of hope, such as Isaiah 54:1: "Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband," says the LORD.” Here, the prophet Isaiah drew on the memory of the exiles (from the story of Sara & Abraham) to call into being fresh hope of new life and homecoming for them. He felt encouraged to remember other times of being ‘pregnant’ with a word God had spoken, which had then come to pass; and to have now the same joyful certainty that God was at work in Boston and in our lives.

We also discussed for a while how God seems to use certain places repeatedly in history (such as maybe Tremont Temple and Park Street Church again now) versus his doing something ‘new’. We noted that ‘newness’ for Judah in 6^th Century BC meant uprooting and destruction of life as they knew it, but was followed by the promise of homecoming through the prophets, for the people who heard it as Judah collapsed.

In prayer, we asked to hear God’s voice amid all the competing voices seeking to make sense of our times, that we might pray and respond widely to them. We prayed that the Boston business community might not be left out of God’s work as the result of busy-ness or pride, but that they hear his voice and co-operate. We also prayed for peace in the Middle east, and especially Lebanon & Israel, remembering victims of the violence, and asking for change of heart in the war makers. We asked that God would be glorified in the midst of all the tough circumstances there.

David shared his sense during prayer that, rather than being pregnant with God’s word in Boston, the spiritual birth of revival or of God’s newness had already happened here: we were living in times akin to those between the birth of Jesus, heralded in the spiritual realms by scores of angels and on earth by only a few shepherds and wise men, and the time when he emerged (after some 30 years or so) into public ministry for a short period, which changed the world. We prayed that we would be wise watch-people, looking for the signs of God’s emergence and preparing ourselves and others for that time, whenever that might be and however that might happen.

We also remembered to pray for:

• Dick’s lunch with Matthew, for whom we have prayed before, on Thursday;
• K.’s dissertation defense next Monday; and
• Afterwards, J. asked for prayer as she followed up with a call this week to her recent job interviewer.

-D. Porteus