Slowing Down for the Sake of My City

Photo by Chinh Le Duc on Unsplash

By JD, who also likes to be known as a “297er,” based on Jeremiah 29:7. “Unhurrying” is a theme of one of our 2HC stations and an important posture in the 2nd half of life. It also is the basis of various important slowing-down practices, such as prayer walking.

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And seek the peace of the city
where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord for it;
for in its peace you will have peace.
(Jeremiah 29:7, New King James Version)

It has now been over 5 years that I have been seeking to obey Jeremiah 29:7 every day of my life by walking the streets of whatever city I find myself in and praying for the peace of that city.

It has become a fixture of my walk with Jesus and also my hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit each day.

Truly, in seeking the peace of my city, I have found much peace.

However, something had escaped my view until encountering it in my recent studies on the spiritual discipline of “slowing”. All of a sudden, it clicked why prayer walking helps me so much to love my city more deeply and pray for it much more effectively.

You see, normally we are driving by at 30 to 70 miles per hour. We are running for exercise. We are knocking out errands before we have to pick up kids from school. We are getting quality time listening to a podcast on our drive to work. We are moving entirely too fast through the lanes and passages of our city to even really see it. We see people, but we don’t notice them. We pass places, but we are not aware of anything that happens there or the people that call that place home.

I have come to realize that this is precisely what prayer walking does for me. It forces me to slow down to a walking pace and actually see places and pray for the people that live there. It limits my ability to breeze by and not even see the look on a person’s face or hear their words.

By praying in the very location where I am asking God to answer, I am forced to actually see it.

Smells and sounds and even the “feel” of the place are important to praying for it well. Yes, He can hear me pray for this place from anywhere. The issue is not with Him, it is with me. I am the one who needs to be in this place to pray for it well because it requires the slowing down to even see it and hear His heart for this place.

In the end, it is only by limiting ourselves to the slow pace of walking that we are able to best see the wounds of our city and the gaps that deeply need peace.

God doesn’t need us to be near and onsite to hear and answer. He needs us to be near and onsite to notice and smell and hear and feel and encounter…not just drive by at 30mph and miss what He has for us and for them.
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Visit JD’s blog at twentynineseven.net Seeking the Peace of My City for more posts on being a 297er