My house shall be a House of Prayer

By the time you read this I should be well on my way to my Bucks Weekend. John, Chris and I are going to the Scottish island of Iona. It is planned to be a time of birding and prayer. We are praying also for a time of Kairos.

We will be staying in a House of Prayer. This last bit seems to have been planned by God! It has significance for me because for some time Debs and I have been living with the vision that our home will become on marriage a House of Prayer. We have been practising praying in the run up to our wedding!

God introduced the idea to both our hearts individually, and so when we started to talk with each other about it it was like we were already prepared to say yes to each other.

The difficult bit might be the how. But we are already becoming more intentional about our prayers. Also deliberately seeking to be intercessors. To assist people with or without faith by coming alongside them and praying for their intentions.

Our experience is that prayer changes things. That if you want things to improve you pray. The cynic may say that this is not empirically measurable. I would say that it is measurable but not using your yard stick. Just in the same way that electricity is not visible to the naked eye.

The interesting thing is we are not going to be the only House of Prayer. We have heard that independent of us God is planting at least two others. One of which we learnt is going to be in Clarkson Street, near the Church we are part of.

The title of this week's post comes from the quote "my house shall be a House of Prayer for all nations" from Isaiah 56.7 in the old testament. Which is also quoted by Jesus when he cast out the money changers "It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be a house of prayer'; but you have made it 'a den of robbers.'" Luke 19:46 NIV

So you can see perhaps why I am excited to be going to Iona. And to be staying in a House of Prayer.

Dear Lord, please help us to know again the power of your Holy Spirit in our lives. Help us when we pray to realise our own weakness but allow us anyway to draw strength from your love. Amen

I will post at Www.yourkairos.com if there are additional readings /thoughts

Act justly, love tenderly, walk humbly with your God

I want to return to the subject of a recent post, to think more about one of the things Fr Greg had said. See "A Time to Pray"

Unfortunately I made "typo"that altered the meaning somewhat, I published "To love the way you want to love is control" (still unpacking that one! I think it is about making our love conditional, choosing to love)

I meant to type "To love the way you want to love is control" (still unpacking that one! I think it is about making our love unconditional, choosing to love).

The word unconditional makes a big difference... If we only love the loveable people we are doing an easy thing. But God is calling us to be disciples of love.

Of course love has many shades of meaning and we can use this almost to get out of doing too much about it. But authentic Christianity demands an authentic attempt to be as loving as Christ. And that is I think where choice comes in.

One Saint said that "to love is to will the good of another" and that can act as our working definition of love in this context. An elderly priest that I used to minister with was fond of saying to me "love means to treat everyone with good will." That is where the unconditional bit comes in. It is the challenging bit of do we treat the smelly tramp with respect even though he could be said to have not earnt respect. But maybe we start (or continue) at the easier end of the spectrum, with family and work colleagues. Thinking about not what they can do for you but what you can do for them. Then move on to the more radical. Of course every now and then someone will get in your face, when they do remember "that a soft answer turns away anger."

Giving up control is not easy. Let me assure you I am no saint. But I have learnt that when I do so it releases God's grace into my life, things start to be different. Less bleak in fact.

In the same way forgiveness also changes things. To refuse to store up wrongs in our memories and to keep "short accounts" changes the dynamics of our relationships.

Dear Lord, please help me to be different, help me to build your kingdom. To love tenderly and to give and receive forgiveness mercifully. Amen

Peace be with you!

It was late that Sunday evening, and the disciples were gathered together behind locked doors, because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities. Then Jesus came and stood among them. "Peace be with you," he said. After saying this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy at seeing the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you." Then he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. ( John 20:19-22 GNT)

As St Augustine says, "we are an Easter People and alleluia is our song." Authentic Christianity hinges on the belief handed down from the disciples that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead after being killed on Good Friday. For us it is what marks him out as more than just a wise man who had a way with words. Because resurrection can only be achieved using God's power.

I guess some of us need proof of this and some question it. And this is the what Gamaliel the high priest himself wrestled with, when he was being asked to imprison Jesus' followers. He said this: "....so in this case, I tell you, do not take any action against these men. Leave them alone! If what they have planned and done is of human origin, it will disappear, but if it comes from God, you cannot possibly defeat them. You could find yourselves fighting against God!” Full passage here Acts 5:34-39 GNT.

For me that is one of the proofs that Jesus is the Son of God, if he was just a Charismatic holy man leading a sect it would have died out. A couple of thousand years later no one would have known about it. Instead from the seed of Jesus life, death and resurrection and of a crew of 12 hand picked misfits Christianity has been formed. As Gamaliel says it has to come from God. It has to come from God to have survived the folly and mistakes we have made in the name of religion. The Holy Spirit is the soul or animator of the church and makes it come out of disaster into victory when we let it. It leads us out of darkness into His wonderful light.

So I put it to you that the hand of God is on history and also on our lives today. We can't always see it but it is there. Imagine spray painting with your child...you get your little one to stretch out their fingers on the paper and spray paint their hand and the paper. When she removes her hand the shape is there but the hand is not. But we can understand that her hand was there originally because we can see the silhouette! Well human history is like that we can't always visibly see God, but we can understand by the imprints left on our lives and the lives of others. The times of grace and of awareness of his presence.

There were over 500 witnesses to the presence of the risen Jesus. That is considerably more than would be needed for a court of law to say that it was proved beyond reasonable doubt. How many witnesses do we need to believe?

Are you a scoffer? Maybe not ... if you are this is what God has to say "look you scoffers! Be astonished and die! For what I am doing today is something you will not believe even when someone explains it to you!" Acts 13.41

Dear Jesus, renew my knowledge of you. Let me receive the Holy Spirit into my life and may it melt my doubt and strengthen my faith. Help me please, I pray, to move forward from this day seeking your love and sharing your peace. Amen

I will turn your mourning into dancing

Imagine if you went for a meal with a friend and they started talking all mystical about death and life and how you should be serving one another, you might begin to feel a sense of unease. Track to 24 hours later the same friend, was arrested, betrayed by another of your mates, subjected to a show trial, sentenced to death, whipped, beaten, nailed to wood, displayed in agony for the world to watch dying....

Then as if that wasn't enough an earthquake, an eclipse and a thief quoting scripture. You have lived with this man for three years... You knew that his cousin John was beheaded. But you never even guessed that death would come for Jesus too. You have walked and talked with him, listened to his jokes. Listened to him goad the Pharisees... Cooked his meals, fished with him, climbed a mountain with him, heard all his stories, more than once each, so that you too know them, prayed every day with him with a strange intensity that could bring an incredible peace.

You have seen him bring healing to people's minds and incredibly also to their bodies. You were there when you heard Peter say to him "You are the Christ, the son of the Living God" when Jesus had asked him "who do you say I am?" ever elusive to questions. Like a quizzical Rabbi.

Now you are locked in a room with others that had travelled with Jesus, shaking with fear, from anxiety that they will come for you next. How could it have come to this. That Jesus, your friend and 'brother' went through this. You think about his last moments. How even at the last gasps he was praying a psalm

One of your friends in the room with you is reciting Psalm 29, saying over again "I will turn your mourning into dancing."

For Reflection:

Who do you say Jesus is?

Dear Jesus, reveal to my heart afresh today what your death was all about. Send your Spirit to me where I am praying, let it open my eyes to the fact that you took on my sin and have given me the route out from it. Let me accept again today that you are my Lord. Let me travel with you over the next three days into the resurrection experience. Fill me again with your joy and turn my mourning into dancing. Amen