Skip to main content

Prayer for the Week Beginning 19th March

Lord Jesus, you call us to follow your way rather than to live in the way of the world. You call us to be guided by your teaching rather than by the wisdom of the people around us. You call us to build up riches in heaven rather than to seek the kind of riches which the marketplace can offer. You call us to be faithful rather than popular, famous or fashionable. You tell us it is better to appear foolish to others rather than to do what is wrong or unjust. You tell us that it is better to lose our life for your sake and for the Gospel rather than to gain the whole world. Help us to follow you in good times and in hard times and to find our reward in knowing that we have done your will. Amen.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his ...

Giotto’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds

John 1.10-18 In the week before Christmas the BBC broadcast a modern version of The Nativity which attempted to retell the story with as much psychological realism as possible. So, for instance, viewers saw how Mary, and Joseph especially, struggled with their feelings. But telling the story of Jesus with psychological realism is not a new idea. It has a long tradition going back seven hundred years to the time of the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. This nativity scene was painted in a church in Padua in about 1305. Much imitated it is one of the first attempts at psychological realism in Christian art. And what a wonderful first attempt it is - a work of genius, in fact! Whereas previously Mary and the Baby Jesus had been depicted facing outwards, or looking at their visitors, with beatific expressions fixed on their faces, Giotto dares to show them staring intently into one another’s eyes, bonding like any mother and newborn baby. Joseph, in contrast, is not looking on with quiet a...

Overcoming separation

1 Peter 1.3-9, John 20.19-31 This year our eldest son will turn 40, but back in the day - when he was five or six perhaps - he was a master at delaying bedtime. Just as we were trying to tuck him into bed he would come up with a range of intriguing and important questions which he felt we wouldn't be able to resist.  For instance one of his questions that I remember is, ‘Where is God?’ When we counteted with something like, ‘God is everywhere,’ he was ready with his next question, ‘If God is everywhere, why can't we see him?’  It's a good question, and it takes us straight to the heart of today's lectionary readings. That was exactly the question which Thomas posed to the other disciples about the risen Jesus on the First Easter Day, and which the writer of the First letter of Peter addresses too. At Meriden we have been using a Lent liturgy which was written by the awarding winning poet and children's author Jan Dean. In her spare time she’s also a Church of Englan...