a child of god
this is the way, run in it
On Friday, at Staff Morning Prayers (at St John's Church), the Morning Prayer service opened up with this.
O Lord, open our lips All: And our mouth shall proclaim Your praise. Your faithful servants bless You. All: They make known the glory of Your kingdom. Blessed are You, Sovereign God, Ruler and judge of all, To you be praise and glory for ever. In the darkness of this age that is passing away May the light of your presence which the saints enjoy Surround our steps as we journey on. May we reflect Your glory this day And so be made ready to see Your face in the heavenly city where night is no more. Blessed be God, father, Son and Holy Spirit. All: Blessed be God forever. This bit of liturgy caught my attention. At the start of it, it declares that God's faithful servants (that's you and me) bless the LORD God, and that our task is "to make known the glory of God's kingdom." How do we do that? The liturgy talks about the darkness of this age that we live in - well, we can all see that! Wars, rumors of wars, oppression, poverty, rioting, violence and violent rhetoric, uncertainty . . . and the list goes on. It then paints this lovely picture of the saints, God's people, walking through this darkness with steps of light, spotlights of light around their feet, around them, as they walk forward. What is this light? It is the reflected glory of God's presence. "May the light of your presence which the saints enjoy surround our steps as we journey on." As we spend time in God's presence, spending time with Him, His glory rubs off on us! Not for our glory, but to display God to the world. "May we reflect Your glory." In doing this, spending time with God, living our lives in such a way that we reflect Him to the world, we are preparing ourselves to see Him face to face one day. It's like someone you get to know through what they have written and what they have done, whom you then get to meet in person and see face to face. One day, we will see God face to face - those who belong to God through Jesus Christ, His Son. 1 Peter 1:8-9 says this, "...and though you have not seen Him (Jesus), you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls." In the Old Testament, the Bible records that Moses, a servant of the LORD God, got to see Him face to face. God said Moses was His friend, as well as His servant (Exodus 33:11). Exodus chapter 34 talks about how when Moses met with God, face to face, he would come out of the tent of meeting and his face shone, the skin on his face shone with the reflected glory of God and His presence. This was alarming to the people of Israel, so Moses would put a veil on his face so they would not be afraid. Moses would take the veil off when he was with God, but he put the veil back on when he came out of the tent to be with the people of Israel. That veil is a foreshadowing of the veil in the temple of God in Jerusalem. That veil (both in the tabernacle and in the final temple) separated the holy of holies where God's presence resided above the mercy seat of the arc of the covenant, just as Moses' veil separated the people from seeing the reflected light off Moses' face from His being in the presence of God. That veil in the temple was torn in two - broken, removed - when Jesus died on the cross (Mark 15:38). It is no longer necessary! Through Jesus, and His sacrifice on the cross for you and me when He paid for our sins, He made a way for us to be able to enter the holy of holies any time we want, as God's children (Hebrews 6:19-20; 10:19-25). We can with confidence approach God, through Jesus and His shed blood for us, as His children - cleansed, loved, forgiven, restored - we can spend time with God in His presence and live our lives in such a way that people see the glory of God, see Him, know Him, like we do.
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Most people say Thank God it's Friday because they are ready for the weekend to arrive and the fun to begin. Its acronym has even become a colloquial expression, TGIF. I like Fridays because I get to go to work! On Fridays, I work at a Church of England local parish church, where I have a lowly job of making sure the services are in the system for Sunday, the rotas are prepared and distributed (did you know that there are rotas in the Bible! so the priests could rotate off and go home and spend time with their families? True. ), and the weekly bulletin is printed and distributed. Someone has to do it! But, on Fridays at this church, we have Staff Morning Prayer, at the beginning of the work day. This is a short 30 minute service, where we go through set liturgy (prayers, canticle, bible readings, more prayer, intercessory prayer) following the Church of England Lectionary. I absolutely love it. Where else do you get to spend time with God and get paid for it? My colleagues laugh at me because when we assign tasks - who is leading the service that day, who reads the Old Testament and who reads the New Testament - I like to bag the Old Testament. I love the New Testament as well, don't get me wrong, but I absolutely adore the Old Testament. The reason for that is the Lord so often speaks to me through it. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while won't be surprised at that! But, today, at work, I claimed the New Testament reading, to the vocal surprise of the others. It was Revelation - need I say more? Some Fridays, the Lord will surprise me and speak to me at Staff Morning Prayer when I'm not anticipating it. He's done that in the past. But today He blew my socks off. Every single bit of liturgy, every bible reading, even the Canticle, seemed to have been picked especially to prick my heart, stir my spirit, wash my soul and it was amazing. It was exactly what I needed (God is good about that!). He was speaking to me through the whole thing, so that by the time we got to the Intercessory Prayer time, watch out! That prayer time was special. The Spirit of God was hovering over us. When I think about the fact that when we praise God, when we call Him holy, holy, holy, we are echoing the whole host of heaven, who also are doing that very thing. In this season of All Saints until Advent in the Lectionary, the liturgy says this before we all said the Lord's Prayer together. It says, Uniting our prayers with the whole company of heaven, as our Savior taught us, so we pray... Our Father, in heaven ... How amazing is that to think that when we pray the Lord's Prayer together, we are joining our voices with the whole company of heaven?! When we say "Our Father" that 'we' is really big.
The Psalm for the day was Psalm 51, and the Curate Ben said, "Who wouldn't love Psalm 51? Washed whiter than snow? Come on!" The OT reading was Daniel 3:19-end, where Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are thrown into the fiery furnace and Jesus is with them, untouched, walking around, with them in the midst of the furnace - and He brings them all out safely, with unsinged hair and garments. Whoo! Jesus is with us, family of God! The NT reading was Revelation 3:14-end, the message to the church in Laodicea. And I was moved, so moved, at how God is wooing His people in that passage. Yes, He tells them off for being luke-warm, like tepid used bath water. He wants us to be passionate about Him, about life with Him, about truth and justice. I can understand His getting impassioned Himself as He tells His people off for thinking they don't need Him. But He also woos them, calls them to come and open the door to Him. God's love for His people, even though it won't supercede His judgement, is always there. It moved me. He moves me. So to end this blog today, I'll leave you with the Canticle, taken from Isaiah 43, selected verses: I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. "I am the LORD, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King." Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for Myself, that they might declare My praise. Let's declare His praise, family of God! And keep our spiritual eyes open to see God's hand in the wilderness with us, in times of plenty with us - let's keep our eyes on Him! |
Franci Ballwatching and working for the kingdom of God in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham - UK Archives
January 2019
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