[Cindy] Jacobs then developed what she calls a “prayer strategy” for people from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minn., to pray for 35 days along Interstate 35.<\/p>\n
“We prayed to eliminate systemic poverty, we prayed for safety, we prayed for people caught in drug addictions, and trapped in their lives and hopeless,” she says.<\/p>\n
The prayers continued well beyond those first 35 days.<\/p>\n
And now the movement is called Light the Highway.<\/p>\n
Light the Highway’s Web site lists 22 churches and prayer groups along the interstate \u201d\u201d in places such as Laredo and Duluth as well as San Antonio, Dallas and Austin, Texas; Oklahoma City and Kansas City, Mo.; Des Moines, Iowa, and Minneapolis. According to the site, participants do not believe that Isaiah actually refers to Interstate 35. Rather, it says, the Bible is used symbolically “as a catalyst to begin praying, just like those who live in Interstate 40 can use Isaiah 40:3.”<\/p>\n
Do travelers think it’s strange when they see a cluster of people \u201d\u201d heads bowed and hands uplifted \u201d\u201d on a grassy strip next to the highway?<\/p>\n
“What would you rather have? A group of young people praying on I-35 or a group of young people dealing drugs on I-35? Take your pick,” says Steve Hill, the 54-year-old senior pastor at Heartland World Ministries, in the Dallas suburb of Irving.<\/p>\n