Morning Prayer Friday, 1 October 2021
Good morning at the beginning of this new month of October; this year is now definitely moving towards its end.
There’s a chill in the air, a different kind of light showing up the bronze and orange and gold of autumn.
Let us thank God for life and light today.
Faithful God, we praise you for your protection through the night and the dawn of this new day.
Thank you for the new beauty of a changing season.
Protect us as we approach our list of jobs today and help us meet each challenge with courage and grace.
In the name of Jesus, the Christ, we pray.
Amen
For the next few weeks, I’m going to focus our prayer on CMK, the City Centre, the heart of the city and our special responsibility.
The offices, shops, services and community groups are all returning to busyness,
new flats are filling up and the horizon is sprouting ever more giant tower cranes.
People come to CMK for many reasons.
It is a focus for exiles and drifters – a place of easy observation without commitment or participation.
It is a place of contrast – a place of bright lights and dark corners. It is a place of promise but also of disappointment.
Christ the Cornerstone is here in the middle of it all:
a place of stability, a place of faith that the God of hope is here and beckoning everyone to come and meet God, come and touch this hope.
To anyone arriving in CMK for any of a host of reasons we are here representing what faith is about,
ready with a judgement-free welcome.
Here is a message from Hebrews that explains it for us:
Faith Gives Substance to Our Hopes and Convinces Us of Realities We Do Not See…
By faith Abraham obeyed the call to leave his home for a land which he was to receive as a possession; he went away without knowing where he was to go. By faith he settled as an alien in the land which had been promised him, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him to the same promise. For he was looking forward to a city with firm foundations, whose architect and builder is God…Although they had not received all things promised, yet they had seen them far ahead and welcomed them and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens without fixed abode on earth…They are looking for a country of their own. If their thoughts had been with the country they had left, they could have found opportunity to return. Instead, we find them longing for a better country, a heavenly one. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he has a city ready for them.
Hebrews 11: 8–10, 13b, 14b–16
Faithful God, we pray for our city centre, our CMK.
We pray for the people who come seeking hope to fill their emptiness.
We pray for the people who come for a fresh start, a new job, a new home.
We pray for the visitors who skim across the surface of our lives.
We pray for the people unseen, hiding from the light, running on empty.
Give us your tools to touch them all, to light a spark of fresh hope within,
to offer them all the hand of friendship, the smile of welcome.
Give us courage to live boldly in CMK, a clear demonstration of your power through faith,
especially faith in the city, that you will not be ashamed that we call you God.
Bless this city, our home on earth, and all the multitude of people who bring it to life.
Amen
And now may God bless us all in the glory of autumn, wherever we may be called to go, whatever we may be called to do this day.
Cheryl Montgomery
