St Cuthbert’s, York: Wells of Prayer

St Cuthbert’s Church at York’s Peaseholme Green declares itself to be home to The Well: House of Prayer. York is overstocked with old parish churches, and some have been flogged off to become music schools, children’s archaeology centres and manufactories of stained glass. All good and noble things of course, but to have St Cuthbert’s retain a primarily Christian function is commendable. A post from the Diocese of York’s website explains thus:

The Well Prayer House will be routinely open to the public every Thursday from 9.30am-7.30pm for anyone wishing to come in to pray privately or to ask for prayer. It will be a facility for the whole city, for the congregation of The Belfrey and for other churches. There are many prayer rooms that have been fitted out following different themes, including: prayer for the city, for answered prayers, a bible reading room, for communion, for art, and for lament (grief and disappointment); as well as two general prayer rooms. People can pray quietly individually or with others, using any of the many spaces available within the church, or they can ask for prayer from a member of our experienced prayer team.

This sounds good to me. I was minded of the Lord Jesus's citation of Isaiah 56 when He drove the traders from the Temple's Court of the Gentiles in Mark 11:17

 “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ”

The house here is specifically the Jerusalem Temple and does not directly apply to every place of worship, Jewish or Christian. Yet I am conscious that prayer in corporate worship may always be squeezed. We dissenters love a good sermon, and we are not averse to good hymns, either, and plenty of them. Yet I hope we also pray to God, not merely as individuals wandering into St Cuth's one Thursday, but as a body of believers. Whether we be thankful, burdened, grieving or disappointed, may we make Salem Chapel a house of prayer and a well of communion with the Living God, the Water of Life.

Now I beg you, brethren, through the Lord Jesus Christ, and through the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in prayers to God for me, that I may be delivered from those in Judea who do not believe, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints,  that I may come to you with joy by the will of God, and may be refreshed together with you.  Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen. Romans 15:30-33