Power in Hope

Good morning on this first Friday in February.
The days are beginning to lengthen and spring flowers are coming along.
Regardless of the snow and the rain Milton Keynes as one is grasping hope and waking up from winter.
Let us praise God together for preserving our hope.

Lord of creation, we wake to a new dawn full of the hope that comes with fresh growth.
Open our eyes to take in our growing city,
open our hearts in gratitude and hospitality to those who care for us
and open our mouths in kindness and words of hope for everyone we meet today.

Amen

It’s been something of a frightening week so far:
doubts about vaccines, new strains of virus, homegrown not imported,
and threats from all sides in and around the island of Ireland.
Among communities and between nations
fear, distrust and anger are a first response to increasing adversity and distress.
At a time when everyone should be acting in unison to defeat a common adversary,
communication has disintegrated into squabble and snatch.
If global humanity loses sight of future hope, we will just sink into the greater malaise of despair.

In Ephesians, Paul reminds those early Christians that there can be no ‘them and us’ in a people of hope.
Jesus made from the many a single new humanity.
Through him, everyone has equal access to the Father in one Spirit.
In chapter 2: 19, he concludes:

Thus you are no longer aliens in a foreign land but fellow citizens with God’s people, members of God’s household. You are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole building is bonded together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built with all the others into a spiritual dwelling for God.

Ephesians 2: 19–22

With deep roots and firm foundations may you, in company with all God’s people, be strong to grasp what is the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love and to know it so you may be filled with the very fullness of God.

Ephesians 3: 17b–19

Thus, we are all in this together and there can be no excuse – ever –
for pushing the poor or less organised to the back of the room when help is distributed.

In the Canary Islands the dispersed Christians are served by Chaplaincy. This is how their February Newsletter describes being together in hope:

We have learned through tragedy that we have a shared, globalised vulnerability, common to all humanity. We have been forced to recognise our dependence on the unchanging love of God who turns his face towards our world. … The risen Christ stands in the midst of our pain and suffering offering hope. In respect and loving memory of those we have lost we can never revert to the insecurity of where we were before – that would be wholly insufficient to the task now at hand. The pandemic provides opportunity to do things better, to do them together.

Holding Hope in a vice-like grip, let’s pray together for ourselves and our world.

Lord of all creation help us be healers and menders of the hatred,
distrust and divisions we see around us.
Let everything we do and say today be full of your hope,
full of your invitation to come see me, come hear me, come know my ways.
May the political leaders of our world each draw breath
and pause for thought before speaking ill of another.
Open all our hearts to the cries of the poor for protection and aid
for we cannot be safe until everyone is safe.
Strengthen our dedication to your hope
with an empowering vision of the world as it should be, not as it is.
For everyone who has died, everyone who gave their all in the fight against disease,
help us live up to their memory with a lively hope, a fierce defence of what is right
and a persistent invitation to become one people, one humanity, in a life of hope.

Amen

Despite our enforced loneliness, let’s step out into the world as far as we may,
brandishing a banner of hope among the snowdrops!