Evening Prayer Tuesday, 1 June 2021

UNTITLED
by Leonard Cohen

Any system you contrive without us
will be brought down
We warned you before
and nothing that you built has stood
Hear it as you lean over you blueprint
Hear it as you roll up your sleeve
Hear it once again
Any system you contrive without us
will be brought down
You have your drugs
You have your guns
You have your Pyramids your Pentagons
With all your grass and bullets
you cannot hunt us any more
All that we disclose of ourselves forever
is this warning
Nothing that you built has stood
Any system you contrive without us
will be brought down.

Good evening and welcome to Evening Prayer

That this evening may be holy, good and peaceful,
let us pray with one heart and mind.

Silence is kept.

As our evening prayer rises before you, O God,
so may your mercy come down upon us
to cleanse our hearts
and set us free to sing your praise
now and for ever. Amen

Breathe in
Breathe out
Be still…

Come, O Spirit of God,
and make within us your dwelling place and home.
May our darkness be dispelled by your light,
and our troubles calmed by your peace;
may all evil be redeemed by your love,
all pain transformed through the suffering of Christ,
and all dying glorified in his risen life.
Amen.

Presence
I pause for a moment
and think of the love and the grace
that God showers on me,
creating me in his image and likeness,
making me his temple….

Freedom
Lord grant me the grace
to have freedom of the spirit.
Cleanse my heart and soul
so I may live joyously in your love.

Consciousness
Jesus, You are always there waiting for me.
Grant that I may be still more often.
That I may always desire to spend time in your presence.
To know Your peace, Your love.

THE WORD OF GOD

Psalm 27:4

One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

Hosea 10:12

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

John 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

WORDS OF WISDOM

The whole creation is eagerly waiting for the full revelation of the children of God. . . . From the beginning until now, the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth. —Romans 8:19, 22

Evolution is just the language of growth and change. In the classic quote above, St. Paul does not actively teach what we now call evolution. Rather, I think he fully assumes it when he says parenthetically “as we know.”

It has always seemed completely strange to me that there should be any resistance whatsoever to evolution or evolutionary thinking in Christian theology or practice. Instead, Christians should have been the first in line to recognize and cooperate with such a dynamic notion of God. But maybe many do not enjoy such a relational God—with all that that implies—and only recognize a “substance” (that which “stands under”) they call God. A static notion of God makes everything else static too, including our very notions of spirituality, history, and religion.

I can only assume that this resistance reflects a very limited inner experience of God.  Anyone with a sense of soul knows this to be true: God is never static within us. Only when God is held without can we continue to think of God as inert, static, and merely imposing laws. Anybody who has paid attention to their inner life or read history books surely recognizes that life and love are cumulative, growing, and going somewhere that is always new and always more. Perhaps it is this newness and non-familiarity of which we are afraid? For some reason, we think that admitting such love dynamism and cooperating with it (see Romans 8:28) is going to compromise our eternal, unchanging notion of God. Yet the Bible is not afraid of a dynamic and unfolding understanding of God. The notion of “The Lord” clearly evolves with many other iterations in the Hebrew Scriptures. For the New Testament writers, these images inspire the Christian notion of Jesus and lead to the utterly relational and totally interactive doctrine of the Trinity. A dynamic understanding of God is not only rather obvious in the Bible, but also necessary—and surely exciting. Remember, the only language available to religion is metaphor. God is always like something else we have experienced visibly and directly.

Fr. Richard Rohr

https://cac.org/divine-love-leads-to-growth-and-change-2021-05-30/
Copyright © 2021 by CAC. Used by permission of CAC. All rights reserved worldwide.

PRAYERS AND INTERCESSIONS

We pray for the world…

Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.

We pray for the universal church of Christ…

Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.

We pray for one another and all those known to us…

Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer

As our Saviour taught us, so we pray

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.

Final Prayer

Abide with us, Lord, for it is evening,
and day is drawing to a close.
Abide with us and with
your whole Church,
in the evening of the day,
in the evening of life,
in the evening of the world;
abide with us and with all
your faithful ones, O Lord,
in time and in eternity.
Amen.

THE BLESSING

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
wherever He may send you.
May He guide you through the wilderness,
protect you through the storm.
May He bring you home rejoicing
at the wonders He has shown you.
May He bring you home rejoicing
once again into our doors.
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Thank you for join us. Goodnight and God bless.

Revd. Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga