(Top photo by Stephen Munday)
Welcome to our 59th prayer walk around Kanazawa! Honestly, the number of times doesn't matter, but people do, and that's why we walk and pray together once a month on Saturday nights.
And last night just happened to have a local neighborhood summer festival going on. I don't know if you can see the name of the area on the above sign, but its name in English means "New Heaven and Earth."
Wow.
Jesus's Kingdom is now and not yet. It's here and there.
Our friend Michael from the US joins us, and the three of us share light as we go.
In between the feasting and revelry, the regular neighborhood eateries and even condos and family homes, the dodgy bars are ubiquitous.
And this is why we started prayer walking in the first place in 2018: human trafficking. (Please read my first prayer-walking blog post here from November 2018 about how my friend Sophia and I got started on one cold night in Kanazawa, with years leading up to that evening.)
Human trafficking is dressed up in Japan as "entertainment," but that title belies the criminality behind most of it. The Japanese Yakuza, or mafia, runs these places and runs the lives of the people that they entrap, be they Japanese or foreign.
Last night I prayed, again, for those who are trapped.
And we prayed blessings on those walking by, those partying with their neighbors, those who are lonely and discarded.
We prayed for a man we later called Mr. Kakigori (an older man on his own who was eating a kakigori iced dessert treat that we talked to), and a young 22-year-old guy named Shoh who works as a truck driver during the day and a part-timer at night walking around advertising a local pub (izakaya).
Shoh had some gold cross jewelry on and Michael asked him if he knew the meaning behind the cross. He didn't.
That led to a great conversation!
And of course we told him we'd be praying for blessings for him, and for safety on the job while driving his truck. He even pulled up photos of his truck on his phone to show us--he's very proud of it, and he should be. It was gleaming and sparkling!
One thing that always touches my heart as we walk and pray is thinking about sharing Jesus
just by being here--we might be the only ones who've ever prayed for specific people who we pass. Or we might be the only people who've prayed for that person today.
And we're not working; we're just walking. Jesus is doing the work.
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