Morning Prayer Friday, 2 July 2021

Good morning, Cornerstone Friends, on this first Friday in July. We begin this day with gratitude:

Dear Lord, thank you for this day. Thank you that through its highs and lows, you have promised to sustain me. There may be troubles but you will not allow them to crush me. Thank you that the same power that raised Christ from the dead is living in me. Whatever comes, you are with me. Help me to keep my heart focused on you today in all I do or say. In Jesus’ name I pray.

Amen

Next week I will be bringing you Friday morning prayers from (hopefully sunny) Blackpool.
We are going to stay with old friends we haven’t seen for three years.
They were always Mr & Mrs Hospitality, with an open-all-hours front door and an auto-on switch for the kettle.
For years they nursed an ambition to run a seaside B&B.
Once the children were grown they made plans, then first one parent then another needed full time care,
so they moved to a bigger house and took them in; the B&B had to wait.
In 2018, with no more commitments, they gathered everything – house sale, savings, pensions and keepsakes –
and invested in a small hotel on the promenade in Blackpool with ‘potential’ but in need of much work.
They opened just over a year later, just in time for the whirlwind that has been the pandemic.
And through everything their reputation for hospitality keeps on growing.
It will be good to finally be able to support them in realising their dream.
As Paul encouraged the Philippians: Be confident of this: that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion! (Philippians 1: 6)

Dear Lord, as we set out on our ‘to do’ list this morning, keep us focused on your goal for us – that we may live with arms open for the welfare of family and neighbours, friends and community; that we may postpone our desires in deference to your will. In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen

It has been so long since we have been able to see each other in person,
to have proper meetings and in-depth discussion, looking into each other’s eyes without an internet filter.
At times it has felt like this isolation, this fragmentation of community, would last forever, right into my old age.
We have arrived at Part 2 of 2021 nurturing the hope that life will not just return to normal
but will become better, with more meaning, more diversity, more fellowship, more care, before I come to my own end.
Isaiah reminds us,

I have made you and I will carry you. I will sustain you and I will rescue you. I will be your God throughout your lifetime – until your hair is white with age.

Isaiah 46: 4

Dear Lord, we put our trust in you, on this first Friday in July, that you will top up our courage with your spirit so there can be comfort for those who suffer, strength for those who bear other’s burdens, challenge to leaders and politicians that they don’t fall into despair or worse, complacency. Replenish us with a strong will and a loud voice to speak up for those with no power, who make no noise, who have no resources, no hope. Make Cornerstone into our longed-for Oasis of Hope in Central Milton Keynes. In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen

The Psalmist writes,
In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you rescued them. To you they cried and were delivered; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.

Psalm 22: 8

Let us set foot on Friday now and, as we go, to remember that nothing is going to happen today that we and our God together can’t handle.

Cheryl Montgomery