8 July 2016

Collects

Prayers developed from the daily readings 

Friday 8 July 2016

Morning Prayer

Psalms 20 and 21: 1 – 7 (8 – 13)

The first psalm begins as a bidding prayer asking that God will answer your prayers, protect you in times of trouble, grant you your heart’s desire and fulfil all your plans. It was originally about the king. God is the one in whom the community trusts, not men or chariots. The psalmist knows God will help.

The second psalm takes this theme of the power being with God and the king’s dependence on God in all things.

2 Chronicles 24: 15 – 25: 4

After the priest Jehoiada’s death, King Joash takes his counsel from officials in Judah. The sacred poles and idols are reinstated. God sends prophets but they are ignored. God sends Zechariah who warns Joash.  Zechariah is stoned to death. By the end of the year the Syrians invade and take all the belongings to Damascus. Joash is wounded and his servants kill him.

Amaziah, Joash’s son takes the throne, he kills the servants who killed his father and appears to turn back to God.

John 4: 27 – 42

Jesus is at the well with the Samaritan woman. The disciples return. The woman goes to the city tells people, invites them to come and see Jesus and to make up their own minds.

Meanwhile the disciples try to get Jesus to eat. He talks about how he is fed by doing God’s work and seeing the harvest beginning. He tells the disciples they are about to benefit from the harvesting done by others.

Many Samaritans come from the city. They believe the woman’s testimony and asked Jesus to stay. Then they say that their belief is confirmed by what they heard from Jesus themselves.

Collect for Morning Prayer

Bark of a red-tingle tree
Walpole WA  L Osburn

Holy and mighty God nothing is too hard for you. You can reunite separated peoples and nations if they believe in you and are faithful. Give us grace as you did the Samaritan woman, to tell others of our experience with you and to invite them to your presence so that meeting you face-to-face they too can experience your saving love through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

Friday 8 July 2016

Evening Prayer

Psalms 24 and 26

The Lord of hosts is the King of glory, is the focus of this psalm. The world and everything in it is God’s. Those who aspire to heaven are the pure and righteous.

The second psalm is from a person who is faithful and has integrity and who has been falsely accused. The psalm asks God to look inside and to bring redemption.

Ezekiel 18: 1 – 23 (24 – 29) 30 – 32

Ezekiel prophesies and says that the righteousness of the parent will not wash away the sins of the offspring and nor will the sins of that person mean that a righteous grandchild is punished. People’s sins are their own. If a righteous person becomes sinful – the consequences are theirs alone. Past righteousness doesn’t wash away the most recent sin.

So Ezekiel is instructed to tell the people to repent, “get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!” (v. 31). “Turn, then, and live” (v.32).

Galatians 4: 8 – 20

Paul is concerned that the Galatians have started observing old festivals that belong to the elemental spirits they worshipped before they were Christian. For Paul, this is “backsliding” and he worries that he has wasted his time with them. He recalls that when he first came he was unwell but they welcomed him and treated him like a holy messenger. Now he feels devalued because he is telling them the truth and they are rejecting it.

Others, who want them to comply with the Mosaic Law, be converted to Judaism and be celebrated, are courting them. Paul wants them to be celebrated already. He feels like he has to start again with them, he wants to be with them so that he can be gentler – but he is away and his message has to come by letter.

Collect for Evening Prayer

Treetop Walk: Vally of the giants
Walpole WA  L Osburn

Loving and forgiving God you are there ready for us always. We slip up. We do the wrong thing. All you ask is that we repent, acknowledge what we have done wrong, clean out and soften our hearts and come back to you. Hold us now as we take that step. Open our hearts so that we may, by your grace, be restored through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, and the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

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