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PRAY NOW: TODAY'S PRAYER
Immigration
'Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.'
Prayer
The crazy moment when I realised I'd said yes to this
Lit a flame of possibility, which consumed
All the old negatives of my life; replaced,
With an unknown future,
The way I'd always presumed things would go.
That flame still burns, hope and excitement conmingled,
As I come into this newness.
Everything is new around me. Everything
Fills me with a new sense of life's immediacy.
For I have arrived in a moment awash with possibility,
And you, Lord, have opened this to me. . .
Soon, newness will yield again to the routine;
Soon this glorious, fragile, vulnerable me,
Reborn from the split chrysalis of my hardened past,
Will - necessarily - harden in the air of a new mundaneness.
Yet, Lord, graciously, from time to time
Reawaken in me the feelings of this moment
This brilliant living on the cusp of yesterday and tomorrow;
Let this moment - the "Now!" - of my arrival
From yesterday's holding-patterns of numb existence
Into the arrivals lounge of life in fullness,
Be the start of who-knows-what, with You.
Readings
Genesis 12:1–3 (compare with Mark 1:16–20)
Genesis 13:14–18
Genesis 15:8–17
Joshua 1:1–9
Psalm 18
Psalm 118:1-5
Matthew 6:25-34
Hebrews 11:1-13
Hebrews 12:18-24
Prayer activity
Think of a notion that occasionally seizes you, or a thought that you once had
that you might change your life in a radical way. (Perhaps you are in the middle
of acting on such a thought anyway - if not, it doesn't matter.) Think through the
new world such a move might put you in. What would be different? What would
be better? Where would God be, in that new life, and new world? And, in that
light - where is God in your life, and your world, as they are now?
Prayer for the Church
Those in my congregation who week by week seek out the stranger and offer
friendship and those who welcome people to our church buildings and services
especially the work of The Well in Glasgow working with the Asian community there
and congregations who welcome and engage with immigrants and asylum seekers as
they try to embrace a new culture. The Church's Inter-faith worker.
Blessing
Let us rejoice
That today and tomorrow and tomorrow
Are in God's hands.
Let us be bold,
And claim his promises.
For God has brought us here
And Christ goes before us
And his Spirit guides us where we go.
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