One for the road...

Being present: why I think the divine hours might help me

I have recently been trying to practise being present to my life/reality - taking my every day ordinary life and instead of running from it or wishing it away, follow the advice of Eugene Peterson's translation of Romans 12:1-2, and lay it down before God with God helping me do that.

I have also been thinking with my reflections on deep church and reconnecting with christian tradition how some form of office of prayer might be helpful - giving me words when my own are a list of complaints or wishes for a better life...

It was therefore may not a total coincidence that I received an email last week asking me if I wanted to review a copy of the 'Divine Hours' pocket edition [UK/USA].  I readily accepted, thinking with my commuting life this could be just what i needed to help me on the train into London and, inparticular because this quote on the blurb really stood out for me:

"As Tickle writes in her introduction, “prayer is always a place as well as an action, and the daily offices are like small chapels or wayside stations within the day’s courses.” For all those who want to carry a “small chapel” of prayers with them, The Divine Hours Pocket Edition™ offers a convenient, easy-to-use, and deeply spiritual guide to a devotional practice..."

As church of late has been about this space of reconnection, an antidote to the me-centricness of my consumer orientated life, i am looking forward to seeing how this helps me across the day and throughout the week - i'll let you know.

In the meantime, do any of you pray the hours or have your own/other regular rhythms of prayer/contemplation/worship?

If you are the praying kind...

...could I ask you to pray on Thursday (21/12) for my three yr old son, Nathan, who is going into hospital to have a routine operation on his tongue - it's only day surgery but they have to knock him out -  hopefully it will help him speak better...

thanks :)

Sutton Vineyard missional trip to Sri Lanka...

Sutton Vineyard, the church I go to, are hoping to send a team in the autumn to Sri Lanka.  Yesterday they had a day of prayer for the country, where violence is flairing again, and for the team itself.  I went along for an hour to pray - its  been a long time since I prayed for an hour and even longer since I've prayed for an hour on one theme.   I confess my mind wandered some of the time and I also prayed for some other people that I'm feeling a lot of compassion for at the mo, the heart doesn't have such rigid walls - but overall it was an awesone time...

One of the things that struck me in reading some of the provided history of Sri Lanka was the legacy of colonialism - Sri Lanka, then Ceylon,  was part of the British Empire and it was us Britains who brought in the minority Tamil's to work on the tea plantations.   After exploiting the country it is not surprising that a few short years after gaining independence the majority people were replicating the sins of colonialism on the minority Tamils.  It might be a post-colonial world for us in the west but how many former colonies around the world are still dealing with the fall out from the mistakes that we made?

One of the things that struck me was that this time, these people from Britain are not going out to lord it over the native population but to be servants to them - I was very much reminded of Jesus ' words:

"You've observed how godless rulers throw their weight around, how quickly a little power goes to their heads. It's not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for the many who are held hostage."

In other words the team is going out to bless and help, to be God's agents, amabasadors of reconciliation, bringers of peace and practical help - not to tell people how to live but to love and live with them for 10 days.

It won't undo by any means the damage caused by our colonial history but I'm praying that the humility, help and healing they can bring as they go will be part of the process that God uses to bring peace...