Morning Prayer Friday, 6 November 2020
Good morning, Cornerstone Friends and my Family in Faith!
What a week this has been so far and today is still to come.
Despite events of certainty, we remain in a world of turmoil and change.
We thought we had learnt how to live with a communicable disease,
but we are once again putting life on pause, hopefully only for a month.
The US election is still on hold while ballot counting continues:
a system meant to provide unity has laid bare deep-seated resentments, divisions and ancient hatreds.
As we begin this last day of this very strange week let us be calm in Christ Jesus and pray:
God of Salvation, thank you for the beautiful light of a day made new.
Surround us with your stillness in the uncertainties we face this day.
Help us safely navigate our regulated lives in your encircling care.
May we display your never-failing love in all we may imagine or do or say.
Amen
From Sunday to Wednesday it felt like a community in panic mode:
not so much buying for hoarding but acting just-in-case.
In case Christmas arrives but we don’t;
in case we can’t meet our friends again;
in case we emerge, if we emerge, into an emptier, bleaker community.
On Tuesday our choir recorded music for Christmas when it was barely November
in readiness for a return full-time to digital worship.
It has been difficult to keep that niggling doubt at bay that a more open December will never arrive.
Meantime, essential people will be at work as usual,
unseen in warehouses and distribution centres.
Carers will still be caring, nurses will still be nursing
and politicians will still be making decisions on our behalf.
God of Community, we pray for our neighbours in Milton Keynes,
especially people who keep us supplied, connected and healthy.
Top up their courage, bring quiet to their noisy lives and provide them with a clear path for today.
We lift to you the people who need our neighbourliness:
people who are shielding still or yet again, people with no one to share ideas,
people without someone to take for a walk.
Bless our governors with a yearning for unity, a striving for common purpose,
that ours may be a new city growing strong in neighbourhoods full of care.
Amen
In all the headlines and frantic commentary,
it has been easy to miss the beauty of the natural world moving from autumn towards winter.
Frost on fallen leaves sparkling in early sunshine is worth looking out for
since it really is something that we don’t often experience.
Over the next month we have time to look – to look out – on a quieter place, a calmer place.
When times are scary it’s good to remember how Paul faced his unstable life.
If we are God’s children through Christ and heirs of his Kingdom through the power of the Spirit then what can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or hardship? Can persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger of sword? ‘We are being done to death for your sake all day long,’ as Scripture says; ‘we have been treated like sheep for slaughter.’ And yet, through it all, overwhelming victory is ours through him who loved us. For I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depths – nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8 :35–end
God of faithfulness, may we go out into the world today
wrapped up warm in your care and totally reliant on you.
We give thanks for the blessings of the light and the new experiences the day will bring.
Let us go out with joy inseparable!
Amen
Cheryl Montgomery
