together, day 5

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:
All praise and thanks to thee, most merciful God, for adopting us as thine own children, for incorporating us into thy holy Church, and for making us worthy to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.  Grant us, we pray, all things necessary for our common life, and bring us all to be of one heart and mind within thy holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 133

Scripture for the Day: John 17:20-26

Reading for Reflection: 

Ultimately the body of Christ, so central in incarnational theology, is not the physical body of Jesus but the corporate body of those who gather around the Spirit, wherever it is found...Jesus exercises the only kind of leadership that can evoke authentic community—a leadership that risks failure (and even crucifixion) by making space for other people to act.  When a leader takes up all the space and preempts all the action, he or she may make something happen, but that something is not community.  Nor is it abundance, because the leader is only one person and one person's resources invariably run out.  But when a leader is willing to trust the abundance that people have and can generate together, willing to take the risk of inviting people to share from that abundance, then and only then may true community emerge. (Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Blessed Be the Tie That Binds

 

Blessed be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like that to that above.

 

Before our Father's throne
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one
Our comforts and our cares.

 

We share each other's woes,
Our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.

 

When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.

 

This glorious hope revives
Our courage by the way;
While each in expectation lives,
And longs to see the day.

 

From sorrow, toil and pain,
And sin, we shall be free,
And perfect love and friendship reign
Through all eternity.

Closing Prayer:
O God, fountain of love, pour love into our souls, that we may love those whom you love with the love you give us, and think and speak about them tenderly, meekly, lovingly; and so loving our brothers and sisters for your sake, may we grow in your love, and live in your love, that by living in your love we may live in you; for Jesus Christ’s sake. (E. B. Pusey, quoted from Classic Christian Prayers by Owen Collins)