Dear Reader,
As I write this, I’m listening to the Biddenham Handbell Ringers in church. I’m startled how familiar tunes are transformed into the most beautiful ethereal sounds by the very act of being rung on handbells. At the risk of over-playing the analogy ;-) maybe this is something like how our ordinary, clumsy and let’s be honest - mostly failing efforts to follow God and His ways can be transformed by the grace of Jesus working through them?
In our Daily Bread meditation at Morning Prayer we pondered on the discovery of a photographer who found that the wings of a humming bird create a prism-like rainbow of colours when birds fly between the bright sun and his camera lens.
Our attempts to love God and others through Christ ‘our Prism’ may likewise be transformed into a rainbow of colours reflecting God’s love.
As the great theologian Thomas Aquinas said:
Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit - grace perfects nature
Be encouraged dear Reader, for our humble efforts, may be made into something beautiful for God, and revealed to us one day.
For our spiritual practice this week, may I invite you to pray this prayer below?
Warm wishes, Andrew+
Personal Response:Pray for our church, that we might fix our eyes on Jesus and persevere. You might like to use this ancient prayer from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:
Gracious Father, we pray for thy holy Catholic Church and our church of St Mary. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Saviour. Amen.”
Luke 12:49–56 NIV
“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?
