Becoming Present in the City

Becoming Present in the City Holding fast through prayer walking

by Victoria Mok

Victoria can be found exploring and prayer walking in her neighbourhood most Tuesday evenings. She worships at Mississauga Chinese Baptist Church. SUBURBIA OFFERS A PERFECT vENUE to disengage from a busy life. Paired with the recent lockdown measures of COvID-19, I relished the opportunity to unplug from everything. As an introverted homebody, I had a fantastic time bundled up inside my home bubble, catching up on knitting and resting from the social interactions that often drained me. I was nice and comfortable being by myself, unchallenged and untethered from many of my usual obligations.

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It challenged me to pray out . . . into the corners

However, in the midst of this season of disconnection and a dire worldwide plague which did not leave my home city unscathed, an old passage I had encountered nudged me and reminded me not to stay curled into myself. I have always been intrigued by Jeremiah’s exhortation to the exiles in Babylon to keep invested in the place they had been forced to go to by building houses, planting gardens and giving their children in marriage. Rather than disengaging from this foreign place, God’s direction is for the Israelites to make themselves a part of the life of the land, giving them this crowning command: “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7 TNIV).

Jeremiah 29 offered me two things during the pandemic. It reminded me that I needed to expand my prayers beyond my own circles and into the whole city, and it challenged me to pray not only in my home, but also out in the corners of my city.

So, in the depths of the winter lockdown, I wrapped myself up in my thickest coat and ventured out into my neighbourhood to pray over COvID’s effects on my city. Wandering the streets along with my housemate, we saw shuttered schools, quiet office buildings and closed-up retail shops. These places would not normally make it onto my prayer list, but seeing them reminded me to pray for the students, managers and workers who used to populate these places. Our thoughts then drifted toward the difficulty of online schooling, the financial impacts of joblessness on families, and the stresses of essential workers. There was no shortage of prayer points springing from the sights we saw, and we lifted to God anything and everything that came to mind.

The funny thing about investing in my city through prayer walking is that it’s addictive. I notice little quirks about my neighbourhood that I would not have discovered by car, like how a creek is nestled in the midst of high-rise buildings, or how I can watch buses pass into a transit way from a pedestrian bridge above. Prayer walking made me fall deeper in love with the city in which I am locked down. It also created a thirst to explore more corners of my city so that I can cover more areas in prayer.

For me, prayer walking has become a vital antidote to the disconnection I feel living in suburbia. While suburban life often involves driving from one place to another without noticing the needs that exist in between, prayer walking has removed my constant rush, allowing me a chance to pay attention to the details of my city in order to pray.

Suburbia is no longer just a place where I detach from my daily stresses and retreat into my own selfcare. I am aware that my presence in the city means that I am to take part in life here. God is invested in the people of my city, and He desires His people to grow roots in the city and love it just like He does, one step at a time. 