Daily Prayer Wednesday, 26 January 2022
Good morning, Cornerstone friends. Some familiar, beautiful but challenging readings of scripture today. They follow on and expand on the theme of last Sunday taken from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth: ‘Just as a body has many parts, but all its parts form one body, so it is with Christ.’ (1 Corinthians 12: 12) If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. (1 Corinthians 12: 26)
O be joyful in the Lord all the earth;
serve the Lord with gladness
and come before his presence with a song.
Know that the Lord is God;
it is he who has made us and we are his;
we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and bless his name.
For the Lord is gracious; his steadfast love is everlasting,
and his faithfulness endures from generation to generation.
Psalm 100
O Christ, door of the sheepfold, whose steadfast love is everlasting, may we enter your gates with praise and go from your courts to serve you in the poor, the lost and the wandering, this day and all our days.
Amen
Common Worship
After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.
‘Whatever house you enter, say “Peace to this house!” And if anyone is there who shares your peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house.
‘Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” …’
Luke 10: 1–9
‘Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;’ makes more sense when you imagine a middle-eastern house with a wall all along the road frontage and a secure gate leading into a courtyard with a fountain and lush greenery where the person you are vising will meet you.
Psalm 100 is more familiar to us in the hymn (published in the Anglo-Genevan Psalter in 1560): ‘All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.’
We also have, in Celebration Hymnal (published in 1994):
Jubilate, everybody, serve the Lord in all his ways, and
come before his presence singing; enter now his courts with praise.
for the Lord our God is gracious and his mercy everlasting.
Jubilate, jubilate, jubilate Deo.
Both have wake up sort of tunes suitable for singing in the morning. Try one!
The gospel today begins, ‘After this’; Jesus had sent out the twelve disciples to teach and heal in Galilee, then many miracles and parables of Jesus and after the Transfiguration to Peter, James and John. It was right at the time our Lord was preparing to travel from Galilee to Jerusalem via Samaria.
‘The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few.’ Has applied to virtually every church I have worshipped in. It surely applies to Christ the Cornerstone! Compared with the numbers who come to worship, the numbers who are actively involved in making things run smoothly are very few!
Let us pray for our church. We need more people prepared to greet those coming to worship as they enter; and others to participate in our worship by reading and leading prayers.
We need people to help with children on Sundays and to help with our pastoral needs as a congregation.
We also need volunteers in the week to be in Reception or help in other ways to run the building in the week.
This is all additional to our aim to be ‘An Oasis of Hope’ for the City Centre communities as set out in our ‘road map’, approved last July.
We have also been asked by the Central Baptist Association to pray for the candidates nominated for the post of Regional Minister/Team Leader. Interviews are due to take place next week. The person in this post is automatically a trustee of Cornerstone Trust, the designated owners of our building and he or she will be part of the oversight of all Ecumenical ventures in Milton Keynes with Baptist involvement. We pray also for Geoff Colmer, who has served in this post for some years.
‘Therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest’ must surely be our prayer this morning.
Almighty God, you have entrusted to your Church a share in the ministry of your Son our great high priest inspire by your Holy Spirit the hearts of many to offer themselves for your ministry that strengthened by his power they may work for the increase of your kingdom in this place.
Amen
Common Worship
The world, it seems, remains a very unfair place and one where the sound of voices saying
‘Peace be to this house’ are needed.
Lord, in a world of many divisions keep beckoning us out of safe havens
into your richer fellowship of challenge and reconciliation, sacrifice and service.
Amen
Iona Prayers
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is division, unity;
where there is error, truth;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light
and where there is sadness, joy.
Amen
St Francis of Assisi
May we each ‘serve the Lord with gladness’ in all that we do today.
Don Head
