The Great Commandment begins with a call to love God and follows with a call to love our neighbor (Matt. 22:37-40). These two commandments overlap, but they are in sequence for a reason. Love for our neighbor ideally flows from our love for God and his love for us. If we get the two reversed—if we try to love others without receiving love from God—we will find ourselves running dry with nothing to give. If we engage solely in activity without contemplating our belovedness, we will grow weary and resentful.

With, In, and For

Prayer and other related spiritual practices such as silent meditation, gratitude exercises, and Sabbath-keeping enable us to receive God’s love so we have something to offer others.

As my seminary professor Haddon Robinson once said, “Before a ministry of service to others, there must be a ministry to our spirit.” Prayer and other spiritual practices allow God to do something in us before we do something for him.

This is why being with God is such an essential part of service. In prayer we become more aware of God and his love for us and those around us. Even though Jesus—more than any other human being—enjoyed an intimate relationship with God the Father, before he began his active ministry, he took time to deliberately savor the presence of his Father and revel in the knowledge that he was the beloved Son. Jesus, led by the Spirit, spent forty days praying and fasting in the desert before initiating his public ministry.

After his ministry began, he also regularly took time to withdraw and pray (Luke 5:16). 

Jesus received God’s leading through prayer. Jesus spent a night praying in the hills before recruiting others to join him in his work (Luke 6:12-16). While seeking his Father, he also received life from him to do the work itself: “The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (John 14:10).

If this was true of Jesus, how much more do we need to experience the love of God through refreshing times of prayer and worship as the source of service for him and others?

The women and men who have been part of Mother Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity, have found their work sustainable across the years because each of them keeps a rhythm of daily prayer. Even amidst the sounds of desperate people, blaring horns, cars, and people selling their wares, they gather for regular times each day to still their body, mind, and spirit before the Lord in prayer. Those in the Missionaries of Charity pray six hours a day and work five hours a day. They also have a regular rhythm of rest: one day a week; one week a month; one month per year; one year in every six. 

Years ago, a friend of mine visited Mother Teresa in Calcutta and asked her, “With all the staggering needs in the world, how do you keep going?” She replied, “We pray the work: we do our work with Jesus, for Jesus, and to Jesus.” Mother Teresa knew that her labor on behalf of the poor was more than anything else an expression of her devotion to Christ. Beyond our tangible efforts for justice in the world today, our prayers for shalom, our rhythms of enjoying time with God, and rest are a central part of our calling.

Prayer Is a Work  

We need to change the way we think about prayer. Prayer is more than just the preparation for our service, or a turbocharger that gives the “real work” of ministry more power. In a very real way, prayer is a work itself—it is the work of ministry.

Prayer is a powerful force in shaping the world. When we pray, we resist the spiritual forces of evil that blind people.

This is why the apostle Paul wrote that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,” calling us “to pray in the Spirit at all times” (Eph. 6:12,18). While unseen and usually unnoticed in Western contexts, cosmic forces of darkness are real and we dare not engage them with the frailties of our flesh alone, but with the all-powerful weapons of God (2 Cor. 10:4).

When he served as a leader of the anti-human trafficking nonprofit International Justice Mission (IJM), Sean Litton would tell the story of a young woman who had lived in a brothel in northern Thailand. Lured by the promise of a good job, Elizabeth (not her real name) had been tricked into going to Thailand, and then forced to work in a brothel. Members of IJM had been praying that God would intervene to remove barriers so they could offer assistance and aid to the girls who had been trafficked. In answer to prayer, they were able to cooperate with some local law enforcement officials (a miracle in itself), leading to the rescue of Elizabeth. 

After the rescue, they discovered small script scratched on the wall of the tiny room where Elizabeth had been locked up inside the brothel. Sean asked a co-worker to translate the characters into English. They read:

      The Lord is my light and my salvation—
      so why should I be afraid?

      The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger,
      so why should I tremble?

      When evil people come to devour me,
      when my enemies and foes attack me,
      they will stumble and fall.

      Though a mighty army surrounds me,
      my heart will not be afraid.

      Even if I am attacked,
      I will remain confident. 

The team learned that Elizabeth was a Christ-follower with a heart to serve God. She had written those words on the wall of her room as a visible reminder of her daily prayer for God to rescue her from the brothel. 

Sean heard these words and realized that, out of all the girls trafficked into Thailand, he and his team had rescued the one who was specifically praying to God for deliverance. Overcome by the mercy and kindness of God, Sean broke down and wept. In spite of all the challenges they had faced, the barriers and the complexity of working with the local officials, God had guided them to Elizabeth—a clear answer to their prayers and hers.

In mysterious ways that we don’t fully understand or typically perceive with our eyes, God uses our prayers to heal and transform the world. Prayer is an act of reverence, but, as theologian Karl Barth noted, it is also an act of defiance against the way things are.

In prayer we rise against the order of this age and join the transformation of the kingdom of this broken world to the kingdom of our Lord (Revelation 11:15)

As we receive God’s love and power through prayer, we become contemplative activists who engage in the glorious work of bringing our divided world into harmony with Christ (Col. 1:20).

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‍Adapted from God in My Everything by Ken Shigematsu

I had begun to understand injustice, at least when it came to issues of racial justice. As a white woman, privilege had always been mine: that much I understood. But as a US citizen, I’d never had to question calling the only place I’d ever known home. There was a whole lot, I realized, I didn’t know about immigration issues.  

When an invitation to join a pilgrimage to the Tijuana-San Diego border surfaced, the only thing I could say was “yes.”

This much I knew: I’d fly into San Diego for an immersive experience with Global Immersion Project. For three nights, we’d stay at locations on both sides of the border; we’d eat local food, drink local drink. 

This was not border tourism, but it was a listening and learning trip—a time for repainting misconceptions, not only within conversations of immigration, but also in spaces of Christian spirituality. 

After all, how did the God Who Sees see migrants? How did the “with-ness” of God accompany lives of turmoil and fraught? 

Day 1 

After arriving in San Diego, we met our fellow sojourners at a hotel. The next day would be full, our leaders advised us. They reminded us that we were not there to be consumers, nor was this a missions trip. 

As I slept in the hotel bed that night, I remember thinking how easy this was all going to be. Little did I know how much the experience would rock me. 

Day 2 

Our group awoke at dawn to eat breakfast and travel by fifteen-passenger van to mountains that ran between the US and Mexico. There, we listened to a pair of US Border Patrol agents, self-described defenders who said their sole role was to prevent “illegal aliens, terrorists, and terrorist weapons” from crossing the border.

A couple hours later, we walked through the gate from San Diego to Tijuana. This, of course, was purposeful. Notice how easy it is to cross into one country. Notice how the lines extend around the corner in the other country. Notice the welcome, notice the hate. Notice the discrepancies between how men and women, children and seniors, Black and White and Brown, are treated along the way. 

Ours was an invitation to notice, perhaps not unlike the God who is always seeing, always noticing, always beckoning us to do the same.

Later that night, we lounged on mismatched couches in the upper room of a men’s shelter, listening to one man’s heroic story of migration from the Northern Triangle to the Mexico border. He desperately wanted to make a better life for his poverty-stricken family back in Honduras, so much so that he would do anything to cross into the US. 

Why, I wondered, did desperation label him illegal? 

Day 3 

We visited a farm that doubled as an orphanage; later, we sat on the floor of a women’s shelter listening to one woman’s heartbreaking story of survival. Weeping with her, we thanked her in broken Spanish and shook our heads with incredulity. Soon we would go home to lives cushioned in comfort, while she continued to run from the Mexican Mafia, hidden behind the bars of a safe house. 

By the time we drove back over the border later that afternoon, I felt like my whole body was stuck in slow motion. Tensions are often the stuff pilgrimages are made of. No longer are we settled into places with people who look like us and think like us and believe like us. Instead, we lean into more questions than answers, into more mystery than certainty.

‍What does it mean to listen to the story of those we haven’t listened to before?

‍I wrote in a journal that night. What does it mean for us to enter gray, not leaning into a black-and-white we’ve always known and heard? 

I sensed God was meeting me in the mystery, that much I knew. 

Day 4 

We ended our morning the way our trip had begun: with stories. We listened to an “angel” who left jugs of water in the desert for weary migrant travelers, and to a DACA recipient who wondered if she’d have to leave the only country she’d ever known. 

We cried some more. 

By the time we arrived back in the offices for a time of reflection, my world felt like it had been turned upside down. I was not the same person I’d been when I’d arrived. My perspectives on immigration, political discourse I so easily believed as gospel, and the sanitized nature of a palpably comfortable God had been picked up, shaken around, and dropped onto the ground. 

This couldn’t have happened had I stayed home, but it took a trip to the border to realize it, embrace it, and be changed by it. 

After all, God is the one who sees those along the migrant pathways. No matter their journey, God accompanies these sojourners every step along the way. And, as a fellow sojourner, I am invited to join with God and these beloved travelers as we move forward—together.

I call myself a redemptive artist, someone who harnesses the transformative power of the arts to help bring about God’s shalom in individuals, communities, and the world. The arts help me better understand and communicate with myself, others, and God. Through the arts, I discovered my identity as a contemplative activist. Through the arts, I encourage others to tap into their contemplative side. The Sankofa pilgrimage is where my redemptive artist and contemplative activist identities work together in perfect harmony.

The Sankofa experience is an immersive discipleship pilgrimage facilitated by the Love Mercy Do Justice (LMDJ) mission priority of the Evangelical Covenant Church. Sankofa, a word from the Akan tribe in Ghana, loosely translates as “go back and get it” or “looking back to move forward.” 

Educating others is a unique way that I live out my calling as a contemplative activist

By visiting historic sites of the Civil Rights Movement, Sankofa helps participants connect the dots between freedom movements of the past and those of the present. Participants partner with someone of a different race and journey together for three days. Like the Freedom Riders of 1961, they travel throughout the South on a coach bus. The purpose of Sankofa is to invite “the church to understand racial righteousness as a critical component of our Christian discipleship. This immersive discipleship pilgrimage equips believers to participate in the kingdom mosaic and pursue biblical justice. Sankofa empowers participants to become ambassadors of reconciliation inside and outside the church.”

In 2012, I stepped on my first Sankofa bus as a participant. From the beginning, all five of my senses were overwhelmed—often in conflicting ways. One morning I indulged in a scrumptious soul food breakfast buffet; minutes later, I was sitting in sacred silence at the 16^th Street Baptist Church, site of the 1963 bombing that killed four young girls. One evening I huddled with others in the damp basement of Jacob Burkle’s house, once a safe haven for escaped slaves and now the Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum. An hour later, I was eating chicken and waffles while bopping to the beat of the blues on Beale Street. 

Each day, I contemplated all I’d seen, touched, heard, tasted, and even smelled, putting those thoughts on paper as words and images. I also had plenty of opportunities to verbally process with my partner and the entire group. 

Since that first Sankofa, I’ve participated in about twenty trips, including some as a co-facilitator. I’ve learned over the years that God has called me to this work. Educating others is a unique way that I live out my calling as a contemplative activist, and Sankofa is the perfect way to do that. Looking back, I now know that the seed of this calling was planted within me on my first Sankofa journey.

It’s worth it to me if just one person walks away “transformed by the renewing” of their mind, motivated to do their part in fighting racial injustice.

It is difficult and painful work. Once, while listening to a presentation, a first-time participant whispered to me, “How can you do this over and over?” I thought about how Harriet Tubman risked her life over and over to lead enslaved people to freedom. Sankofa is exhausting in every way, but it’s worth it to me if just one person walks away “transformed by the renewing” of their mind, motivated to do their part in fighting racial injustice.

While co-leading a Sankofa journey in October 2019, I had one particular experience that has stuck with me. It reminds me why I choose to participate in these pilgrimages again and again. 

At the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice, we saw a presentation that began with a video called “Why Build a Lynching Memorial?” The video showed images and statistics while an acapella quartet sang “I Love the Lord (He Heard My Cry).” This rendition of the song resembles versions sung for decades in Black congregations around the country, including my grandfather’s old country church where I first heard it as a child. The song references Psalm 116:1-2. As I listened that day, the lyrics and emotion of the singers, combined with the images and statistics, hit my soul in a way I couldn’t fully explain. 

Each step of this discipleship pilgrimage is my way of continuing to say yes, and continuing to be renewed in my faith.

The next morning, still reflecting on the previous day’s experience, I read Psalm 116. I realized the words were perfect for our group as we prepared to pilgrimage over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of Bloody Sunday in 1965. While we stood at the foot of the bridge in Selma, I read Psalm 116 aloud to the group. I shared the connection between verse 14, “I will fulfill my vows to the Lord,” and the Negro Spiritual “Done Made My Vow to the Lord.” We encouraged our fellow pilgrims to consider what vow they wanted to make to the Lord and to reflect on the vows made by those who marched on Bloody Sunday. We then silently followed the footsteps of the pilgrims who had walked before us.

Why do I make this journey every chance I get? God called, and I answered. Each step of this discipleship pilgrimage is my way of continuing to say yes, and continuing to be renewed in my faith. 

On another trip in 2015, we heard from Anthony Ray Hinton, who had been recently released from prison after being wrongfully convicted and spending thirty years on death row. His great faith in God—after enduring so much unnecessary anguish—inspired me to persevere in my own faith walk. He was free because of the work of other activists, many of whom I’d consider to be contemplative activists. His story reminded me that our work makes a difference to the marginalized, and it matters deeply to God. 

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The next Sankofa pilgrimage is October 13-16, 2022.