Prayer Vigilantes

Well, I just got back from helping out at the 24-hour prayer vigil we're doing at church. Man, if you haven't gone and you're in the area, you really need to go (and if you're out of town, you have until 7 PM tonight to get here). It has been a really amazing experience so far. Ricky and I got some guys together to lead worship for the 11 to midnight and the midnight to 1 AM shift. Nothing too fancy. Christian was on bass, Igor took the djimbe, Liz singing, Ricky on keys and vocals and me singing and playing acoutsic guitar, so it was a neat little quasi-unplugged set.

The remarkable thing for me was the almost instant development of community among the people there. For a lot of the folks, it was their first time at a prayer vigil, and you saw the wide-eyed looks on their faces when they realized how cool it is that at a church the size of ours, a small group of people can come together and connect in worship and prayer so deeply. There was a really neat sense of awe about the whole proceedings; I think for a lot of the people there, communion took on a whole new meaning. People were crying real tears, I mean really crying out to God, and it was like we all came to this deep realization that, yeah, this thing is for real, and God is really here, and he's way different than anything we've ever known.

It was beautiful and free and was long where it needed to be long and short where it needed to be short (which also means that Paolo was back in the booth yanking his hair out as he was trying to keep up with us on the slides), and I really think God was honored, because we were all reminded that the journey we're on isn't just about us anymore; it's about the God who is madly in love with the community we live in and for some reason wants a bunch of screwed up orphans like us to join him.

sigh...I love my church.