Space to Pray in Every Working DayThe Phantom Intercessor - 22 Nov 2010

We strode down the corridor, tripping over trailing flightbags and scanning the signs, ‘Ausgang’ and ‘Gepack’. On the first door inside the terminal, a sign caught my eye, ‘Gebetsraum fur Juden’, a star of David, a sign for synagogue timings. Carried relentlessly on towards a day of business at the trade fair, I reflected down the escalator. That was good. Once these labels might have been altogether more sinister. Now hosting a Jewish Prayer Room in a German airport might be an attempt to absolve public conscience, to make a statement. But this was still something good, something right. It was the protection of a minority, an affirmation of their right to pray, a positive welcome.

Later, immersed in the trade fair, I remembered I should take time out to pray.  To draw on him, to withdraw. A quiet corner somewhere - would it be offensive or prudish to get out my Bible at the café? Would God mind if I shut myself in the loo?  We’ve all done it lots of times, but there is something faintly unholy about having to go to the loo to pray. Of course we can pray anywhere, so I decided to walk.

Prayerwalking the corridors between the trade stands, the things I’d been reading weighing on my mind: stomach-winding attacks from New Atheists, the new round of books to follow ‘The God Delusion’ and ‘God is not great’. How seemingly innocuous and yet monumentally influential books can be. God forgive us, our proud minds and cold hearts.

I wandered down travelators, wondering at all this, and found myself in Halle 5, on unexpectedly familiar territory somehow beamed down from the land my family and I currently call home: the lavish sofas and drapes of the Abu Dhabi stand; a banner for the fledgling Sharjah book fair; a cluster of educational publishers from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, a stand with electronic devices (‘the Quran made simple’), and one from Riyadh (odd to see an all male publishing stand).

And there, I confess, my heart sank at another sign: ‘Prayer room for Muslims’.

I stopped myself from feeling peeved (prayer envy?), that even here there is a prayer room for Muslims. Christian publishers have been doing this bookfair for years, and don’t dare ask.  Do we not want to pray?

We can pray anywhere, yes. We can discipline against distraction, we can read our bibles discretely, we can feign sleep on the train. But to have permission to pray, a place that is appropriate and where Jesus is not averaged out in the name of inclusiveness. A place to pray on a journey, on a commute, in the working day.

That evening on my way to the boarding gate, another sign caught my eye ‘Christian prayer room’. I stopped mid-stride, hesitated, doubled back. I ventured cautiously inside. Expecting the bland neglect of airport multi-faith prayer rooms - a tattered NEB, fifteen copies of the Qu’ran and couple of shoe stands - I cried out in surprise. Light, clean, quiet … a sense of holiness. A white wall curved around the back of a few simple wooden chairs, a cross of artfully twisted metal in the corner. A bible open on a lecturn. A sand tray with red candle stubs and matches, a mirror with ‘through a glass darkly’ etched in four languages. A shelf with simple prayer papers to take away, Psalm 23 and prayers for travellers printed in German and English.

And near the door, a table and a chair, pens and a hard-backed book.

I sat down and opened it reverently. Pages of curling biro, of staccato felt tip, of shy pencil poured out their prayers. Prayers in Russian and Chinese and Italian and unknown languages, thanking God, begging God, loving God. Prayers for a sick sister, prayers for a miraculous work trip, prayers of longing to be closer to Jesus. The prayers of travellers. With tears I added my prayer to this holy book, in this holy place, and breathed in a sense of God’s heart for the wandering soul.

Flying back to London over steeples and spires, I remembered the hundreds and thousands of green lit minarets back ‘home’ in the United Arab Emirates. The commitment to a mosque-building programme so extensive that no-one will have to walk more than 10 minutes to pray. The busy mosques with shopping malls and a café and a barber. That are always open for prayers, and where people actually pray, shoes on the step outside, arms and feet washed, five times a day.

In most villages, towns and cities there is a church no more than ten minutes away. But our ancient prayer places, once lovely expressions of worship, are now an insurance liability, too expensive to heat, a financial burden, locked. There is no priest to open up, to pray with people, and no-one comes to pray.

Crazy thought, but what if … what if we, who are called to pray, … what if we opened up those ancient places? Not for a week or a month, but every lunchtime, every morning, whenever. For those who are called to be his hands and feet in banking and law, in building and nursing, who have no space and little time in their days to pray. Who feign sleep on the train and pray in the loo. What if we created space for them to pray? What if we somehow opened up these ancient prayer places, so that no-one had to walk more than ten minutes to walk, so that everyone had a place to pray in their working day?