[inofindy]

While driving home from work yesterday, I was listening to NPR and there was a story about a Church in Texas that started a ministry where they go to the side of I-35 and pray for passing motorist. The movement is called Light the Highway. They said they pray for the end of systemic poverty, safety, pray for people caught in drug addictions, and trapped in their lives and hopeless. If you go to their website they list 22 churches on I-35 that participate.

Though Light the Highway is not widely known, there is considerable skepticism about it at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
"America is full of religious groups that are testing the boundaries of what is possible to believe — much of which will have a very ephemeral lifespan and will fade from the scene because it's without substance," says William Lawrence, the dean at Perkins.


I was talking about this with friends and family last night and the idea came up that what the Light the Highway group was doing was useless because praying for people you don't know and have only seen briefly as they fly down the highway is not the way prayer is supposed to work. I voiced my opinion that prayer is a personal thing and means different things to everyone, but was basicly laughed at.
What are your thoughts?

[Cnbaapuy]

I think it's a nice thought...and I often pray for people I don't know...(see our prayer section) and I believe it helps.

[avodeinst]

I agree, I pray for strangers all the time,don't think its a waste of time at all.
Power in the prayer

[emuffette]

At UU church services today there was both a general prayer and a hymn for all of the people of the world to be free of sorrow and suffering. Transcendental meditators visit countries having civil strife or war in groups and meditate in an effort to bring peace and calm.

Establishing whether these things actually work is another thing though. I'm guessing that with prayer it is usually only verified one person at a time.