17 March 2014

Collects

Prayers developed from the daily readings 

Monday 17 March 2014

Morning Prayer

Psalms 40

The psalmist praises God for responding to him in a time of need. People who trust in God are blessed. God is said to have opened the psalmist’s ears and the psalmist has found himself in the scriptures. Ongoing mercy, love and faithfulness from are requested God so that the psalmist can be supported through times of danger and harm. The psalm ends in praise.

Jeremiah 29: 1 – 19 (20 – 23)

Jeremiah sends a letter to the exiles in Babylon. He proclaims that God said to him to tell them to make solid and normal lives, get married, have children, build their future and care for the city and its peoples. He says not to listen to anyone in Babylon who claims to be a prophet because they are false. It will be 70 years before anyone returns. Those who pray to God in Babylon will be heard. Meanwhile the people left behind in Judah will suffer pestilence, violence and famine because they did not heed God.

Luke 12: 49 – 59

Jesus talks about the baptism he is about to endure. He talks to about the crisis his life brings – in the sense of making a choice that will change our lives: for many a passionate choice. Families will divide. And that we can all read that the weather is about to change and act appropriately, but we are blind to the urgent need to make ultimate choices and take the risk and choose God as the central concern of our lives.

Collect for Morning Prayer

Church at the Benedictine Abbey Jamberoo NSW
LOsburn

God of all, God of the ages what can we say of you? Psalmists, prophets and your own son tell us to choose you, to trust in you, to live our lives with you. Give us strength and courage today to make the choices we need to live our lives to your praise and glory through Jesus Christ our Lord and your Holy Spirit. Amen.

Monday 17 March 2014

Evening Prayer

Psalms 42 and 43

The psalmist is sad, perhaps sick and longing to go to the temple since that is where God was thought to dwell. The psalmist’s soul longs for God.

Here the psalmist is ill and unable to travel to the temple.

Illness was thought to be evidence of separation from God. The psalmist asks that someone see that he is not unworthy and take him to the temple.

Genesis 43: 1 – 15

In Canaan the grain is about to run out and Jacob still questions why the Egyptian knows so much about them to demand the other brother. Judah promises to protect Benjamin. Jacob takes the risk and says, “As for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved” (v 14). They begin their journey back to Egypt with the money that had been put in their sacks, double the asking price for grain, fruits of the land: honey nuts and resin, and Benjamin.

Hebrews 7: 11 – 25

Jesus is the eternal priest available to save those who approach God through him (v 25). He has been appointed forever and represents a new and better covenant with God.

Collect for Evening Prayer

The Estuary Mandurah WA
2014 L Osburn

Loving, generous and gracious God, in the form of Jesus Christ you came to us. You, the most high God, came to us. In scripture you show us that we need to take the risk and you demonstrated; you are the physical evidence of what “risk everything,” means. Help us to praise and honour you all the days of our lives in everything we do through Jesus Christ and the power of your Holy Spirit in our hearts. Amen.