Morning Prayer Wednesday, 19 May 2021
Good morning Cornerstone friends.
I hope you find this morning refreshed from sleep and ready for the day.
When you join in these thoughts and prayers I shall be miles away in Sussex
near where I grew up, to visit my brother and family and places of my childhood
near the South Downs, but close enough to the sea to get the salt in the air.
It brings to my mind some lines of poetry by Hilaire Belloc who also grew up in Sussex;
The green hills of the South Country
they stand along the sea;
and it’s there walking in the high woods
that I would wish to be,
and the men that were boys when I was a boy
walking along with me.
I hope to copy Hilaire Belloc and walk with my brother today.
Blessed be the Lord who bears our burdens day by day,
for God is our salvation.
Send forth your strength, O God;
establish, O God, what you have wrought in us.
For your temple’s sake in Jerusalem,
kings shall bring their gifts to you.
Drive back with your word the wild beasts of the reeds,
the herds of the bull-like, the brutish hordes.
Trample down those who lust after silver;
scatter the people who delight in war.
Vessels of bronze shall be brought from Egypt;
Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to God.
Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth;
make music in praise to the Lord.
Psalm 68: 18, 27-32
This is another great psalm of praise, remembering the great power of God and how this is used against evil and in favour of those the world considers ‘the weak’ or ‘the unworthy’.
Blessed are you, gracious God;
you make your home among the weak, you deliver us from death,
you bring us joy beyond imagining to the praise of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world and for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
John 17: 11–19
The gospel reading, which we had also on Sunday,
is another part of the prayer made on behalf of our Lord’s disciples
as he prepared himself to leave the world.
He left a few disciples that he knew were ‘hated by the world’.
In later verses Jesus includes not just the disciples
but all of those who through them come to believe in God through Him. That is you and me.
We have our Lord, still pleading for us today, still asking that we may be ‘sanctified in truth’.
We are not weak and insignificant
so we can go on with trust that he will keep us faithful to that truth.
Ernesto in his message on Sunday gave us insight into the choice of conflict or collaboration with the world.
Years ago in being involved with MK Christian Foundation,
where we choose collaboration but trying to keep faithful to truth,
I always try involvement by collaboration.
I was so encouraged recently to read a message from Peter Ogik,
one of the main links in Africa to our adopted charity Advantage Africa.
On hearing that one of their main programmes to help those who have albinism
(no skin pigmentation) had lost support from the British government aid funds,
Peter, who also has this condition, gave heart to his colleagues,
saying, ‘We are strong; we do not have to give up, we have to redouble our efforts’.
Some of us from Cornerstone had the joy of meeting Peter when he visited Britain two years ago
and he is a marvellous soul and so encouraging to be with.
If he can be confident, none of us should feel fear at what the world may ‘throw at us’.
Let us pray for the church:
We are approaching Pentecost, when we remember the Holy Spirit entering the disciples as they gathered,
locked away, providing such energy and assurance that they astonished all the crowds in Jerusalem
to celebrate the feast and no doubt themselves
for they began the movement which was originally called ‘The Way’ and became the Christian Church.
Let us pray that we and the whole church in our day can change our world for the better.
Loving God, open our hearts so that we may feel the breath and play of your Spirit.
Unclench our hands so that we may reach out to one another, and touch and be healed.
Open our lips that we may drink in the delight and wonder of life.
Open our eyes that we may see Christ in friend and stranger.
Breathe your Spirit into us and touch our lives with the life of Christ.
Amen
from Aotearoa, New Zealand
Let us pray for the world.
When writing this the situation in Jerusalem and Gaza was still very uncertain and threatening.
It is not the only place in the world where conflict is affecting the lives of people and whole communities.
The Covid pandemic is still affecting people in many nations and causing pain and death,
personal grief and economic difficulties.
Some words of a twentieth century martyr.
One cannot wait for the conditions to be easy in order to act.
And so, the people of goodwill must never be disheartened
when faced with the sudden unleashing of violence.
In the midst of it all, the seed sown in our heart slowly germinates.
When God becomes a child,
he knows there is no better way to express himself than through the weakness of a child.
That is love telling you it comes unarmed.
Christophe Munzihirwa, Archbishop of Bukuvu in CDR, assassinated in 1996
Christ of the pilgrim road, may your pilgrim people be more concerned with justice
than with easy piety when so many around us are hurting.
Amen
This is the day that God has made.
We will rejoice and be glad in it.
We will not offer to God offerings that cost us nothing.
We will go in peace to serve the Lord, to seek truth and pursue it.
In the name of the Trinity of Love, we take our pilgrim way.
Don Head
