Sunday's coming!

  Ephesians 3:14-21 I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Reflection 1 What a lovely reading – Paul writes it in his letter as a prayer for the church at Ephesus. On bended knee he prays: “that you may be strengthened in your inner being through

Psalm 23, Mark 6: 30-34; 53-56 Earlier, instead of someone reading the 23 rd  Psalm, I asked whether we could, together, remember the 23 rd  Psalm. You might wonder why I would try that?  The answer is that I wasn’t just testing our memories, but trying to show us how ingrained those words can be.   In a church I was serving about 20 years ago, I got a message one afternoon that one of our church members had gone into a nearby hospice. It was a bit unexpected, Muriel had known she had cancer for a while, but she had suddenly gone downhill. I went straight round to visit her, finding her much more comfortable than she had been latterly, as they had given her morphine, but quite a lot sleepier. She gave me a lovely smile as I walked in and asked “will you read me something from the Bible?”. I hadn’t got a Bible with me, there wasn’t one in her room, it was in the days before my phone could do anything as clever as browse the internet.    But thanks to a fairly traditional junior school e

2 Corinthians 12:2-10 & Psalm 123  There is a desperation about Psalm 123 (which we just heard read). “Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy,  for we have had more than enough of contempt”. It is a plea for help in times of trouble. A desperate plea that God will strengthen his people. It conjures up the image of someone looking helplessly up at God, hoping for God to intervene and help. Taken on its own it’s not a Psalm that seems to offer much hope: but it is, at least, honest.  ‘Have mercy on us O Lord’ Sometimes we all know that feeling of helplessness, hopelessness, when we experience times of weakness, difficulty, even feeling under attack. Those times when we cry ‘Now what!’  - when we are criticised by others, feel misunderstood, and are very aware of own failings. Then where is God? At the Zoom Bible Study on Tuesday we asked ourselves ‘how do you react at those times of weakness? Some of us confessed to putting on a brave face in public, whilst inside we might be crumbli