Category: Daily Prayer

Soulwork by Tracy K. Smith One’s is to feed. One’s is to cleave. One’s to be doubled over under greed. One’s is strife. One’s to be strangled by life. One’s to be called and to rise. One’s to stare fire in the eye. One’s is bondage to pleasure. One’s to be held captive by power. One’s...

Good morning, Cornerstone friends. Let us spend time together moving closer to our God. Sing praise to the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion. For he has strengthened the bars of your gates and blest your children within you. He has established peace within your borders and satisfies you with the finest wheat. He...

A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde   For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at...

Silence by Billy Collins There is the sudden silence of the crowd above a player not moving on the field, and the silence of the orchid. The silence of the falling vase before it strikes the floor, the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child. The stillness of the cup and the...

Today by Billy Collins If ever there were a spring day so perfect, so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage, indeed, rip the little door from its jamb, a day when the cool brick...

On a dark night by St. John of the Cross   On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings –oh, happy chance!– I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest. In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised –oh, happy chance!– In darkness and in concealment, My house being now...

Let’s begin our prayer time this evening by reading again from St Matthew’s Gospel about Jesus’s experience in the wilderness: Jesus is Tested in the Wilderness 1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting for forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to...

Good morning to you all on this World Day of Prayer, 5 March 2021. Later this morning we will be able to come together as Christ the Cornerstone to mark the Day and also to virtually join others in celebration. When Martin Luther was asked ‘What should move us to pray?’ he replied, ‘God’s command and promise,...

We begin our prayers this evening with the Lenten prayer that forms part of our Lent study materials and that we are using as the Prayer of the Week in our Sunday morning services throughout Lent: Lenten Prayer God who calls us on our journey, as we remember Jesus’ time in the wilderness, help us to...

Third Temptation: To Bow the Knee to Satan Matthew 4: 8–11 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory; and he said to him, ‘All these things will I give you, if you fall down and worship me.’ Matthew 4: 8–9 This...

Love Doesn’t Need a Story By Alfred K. LaMotte  As you awaken, just before the mind of yesterday falls like a net of stones be weightless. Be presence without a story – How your soul looks in that mirror when it sees itself! What gets you out of bed, trembling like a wild purple iris in...

Good Wednesday morning, Cornerstone friends. We are in March and the blackthorn trees are blossoming with bundles of white flowers. Let us spend some time together before we move on to the rest of our day. Be my strong rock, a fortress to save me, for you are my rock and my stronghold; guide me and...

Words That Wait to Be Said By Jeanne Lohmann Having come to the place where I no longer wish to be anyone else, astonished to find I’ve traveled far enough to let the children go and put the old ladder of perfection away behind the other antiques in the barn, what needs me now is joy,...

The Waking By Theodore Roethke I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take...