Norwich "Prayer for the City", February, 2008

At the beginning of the year,, all the churches in Norwich took part in a prayer event for the city as part of the Hope '08 Initiative. St. Lukes Church chose the week commencing Sunday, 3rd February, and every one of us took part, not only in spoken prayer, but in a practical way too. We were encouraged to make prayer boxes for our households, using photos and objects as a means of reminding ourselves of the subjects and the people we were praying for. Each family had a prayer chart where we set ourselves a subject for each day, wrote it down, and stuck on a "done it" sticker, when we'd brought the concern to God. We were each given seven coloured strips of paper, which we used to make papaer prayer chains - writing a subject on a link each day!! On Sunday, February 10th, these paper prayer chains were all brought to church and attached together in one long chain to represent the whole of St. Luke's Church praying for the whole of Norwich. We chose subjects like the Homeless, Local Doctors and Hospital Workers, Schools, Neighbours, Reycling and the Litter Problem, and local organisations such as the All Saints Westlegate Drop in Centre, Y.M.C.A., Street Pastors, Pregnancy Crisis.
The Tree of Life had been our Christmas tree for 2007. It was brought back and positioned in front of the Cross, and over the course of three separate events, we wrote our prayers on cards and hung them on the branches. This was symbolic of us offering our prayers to Jesus. Look carefully at the photo and notice how the tree is superimposed int o the Cross. I feel this points to the fact that the Cross is now empty, because Jesus is alive, and the tree represents the Risen Jesus!!