This afternoon, a colleague took me to The Potter’s Place, a kind of prayer resort near our campus that gives disciples an “environment of quiet solitude where those who come can seek God.”
My colleague described the place as “prayed over” and just from my 45 minutes there with him today, I felt clarity and the ability to articulate some deep concerns in my own family and personal life.
Right now, my colleague is separated from his wife and children who are in Canada as they try to get proper visas for the US. This weekend, he said, he had finally put together and prayed over the beds his daughters will sleep in when they arrive.
The story cut me to the quick. This weekend, I was inside our new, still-under-construction home, and it never occurred to me to pray. As I continued to reflect on the semester, I had to admit that while my classroom was prayed in I couldn’t honestly call it prayed over. I’ve prayed for a place as a kind of metonymy for the people in it, but only as an abstraction.
So this evening, I prayed: “God, thank you for the spaces you’ve provided me to pray and share and serve. I commend to your continual care the home we are renting, the home plan to live in, as well as the office and classrooms I teach in. Remove any impediment in these places that would hinder your spirit’s work. Grant the family and students and neighbors and strangers who come into these spaces to know your love. Fill each of these spaces with your presence, and grant me a servant’s heart so that I may love you and others there.”