St. Paul’s Cycle of Prayer – Monday – Children, youth, and family ministries of St. Paul’s and those who teach and work with our youth. Our music program and choirs.

Today is the Feast Day of St. Peter and St. Paul. I switched to Evening Prayer for my devotional time, but both Morning and Evening Prayer (and our Daily Eucharist today) include the Collect (a prayer that “collects” our thoughts) for these two great apostles. That prayer includes these words: Grant that your Church, instructed by their teaching and example, and knit together in unity by your Spirit, may ever stand firm upon the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ our Lord.

Good words as we continue our work at General Convention. We need LOTS of prayers. We are making pretty big decisions. Unfortunately it is a legislative process, which results in winners and losers. May we remember their example and allow the Spirit to unite us as we never forget it is Jesus Christ who is our firm foundation.

Knit us together, O Lord, in Spirit and in Truth.

St. Paul’s Cycle of Prayer – 

Sunday – Clergy, Staff, Wardens and Vestry and the Rector Search (click HERE to read the Rector Search prayer)

(as always you can click “Prayer Instructions” for online resources to help with praying the Daily Office)

The Sunday of General Convention (GC) is always the United Thank Offering (UTO)  ingathering, where the Episcopal Church Women (ECW) representatives present the UTO gifts from their respective dioceses. Today they presented checks totaling over 4 million dollars – all of which goes back into local communities in the form of grants for outreach projects.

This Eucharist is extremely well attended and always wonderful. So I will reflect on that today, rather than on Morning Prayer.

Psalm 30 appointed for today includes this verse: “You have turned my wailing into dancing;* you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.”

The Psalms contain every possible expression of emotions of the people of God – joy, despair, hate, love, blessing, confusion, fear, weeping, dancing and wailing included. This image of God turning our wailing into dancing and clothing us with joy is breath taking. Perhaps you can relate to this in your own life?

No matter what you believe about the movement in our society and our church to allow same sex marriages, I can tell you on Friday when the  SCOTUS decision was announced, I literally saw with my own eyes so many couples dancing, who had been wailing for so long. They felt the power of this Psalm in a deep and personal way. They were clothed in joy.

It’s a good feeling. If you are in a wailing place in your life, may God clothe you with joy. Let this be our prayer.

St. Paul’s Cycle of Prayer – Saturday – for the Green Team and for all Creation, for our ministries to Seniors, and for all on our Parish prayer list.

The Mission St. Clare version of Morning Prayer today includes this Opening Sentence:

You shall receive power when the Holy Ghost has come upon you; and you shall be my witness in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1:8

It shouldn’t be surprising to me how the Holy Spirit, through Scripture reading, study, and prayer, so often reminds us, grounds us, brings us back to keeping the main thing, the main thing. Right off the bat this morning, the first words of Morning Prayer for me speak to me right what I need to hear. In the midst of the legislative process, rules of order, debates over punctuation, and also some really, really important conversations and debate, to be reminded of the power given us by the Holy Spirit and the Great Commandment from Matthew 28 which is echoed here in the Acts passage – go and be witnesses for Jesus to all the ends of the earth. You have the power to be a witness. In all the mish-mash and muddling and disagreement, we have Jesus, right in the center, known to us in the breaking of the bread, calling us to be witnesses, to feed the poor and clothe the naked and provide water for the thirsty and to visit the sick and those in prison, to wash each other’s feet and to love one another, neighbor and even enemy, the way He loves us. He first loved us. He first loved us. He first loved us. And then, sent us to go and do likewise.

Amen.

St. Paul’s Cycle of Prayer: Friday – Daughters of the King, Brotherhood of St. Andrew, Marthas, worship volunteers (acolytes, ushers and greeters, chalice bearers) and all over volunteer groups who work so tirelessly and joyfully for the Kingdom of God and the Body of Christ at St. Paul’s.

  I arose with the sun this morning, a beautiful view from my hotel window here in Salt Lake City. It’s a pretty town, clean and HOT. Once the sun goes down it is wonderful in the early evening, low humidity DOES make a difference.

The gospel reading appointed for today includes these words from Jesus to Peter (Luke 22:31-32):

31’Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, 32but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.’ 

This is the well known passage where Peter swears he will follow Jesus no matter what may happen, and Jesus tells Peter he will deny Jesus three times before the cock crows. But in reflecting on this passage this morning, I was struck by the tenderness in Jesus’ words. “I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Jesus knew failure was coming for Peter. And he didn’t leave Peter with failure as the final answer. “When you have turned back”, he says. Not “if”. “When”. When you have turned back I need you, Peter, to be the strength, the ROCK as it were. Failure did not remove Peter from leadership or from evangelism or mission or service. Much was expected, still. Strengthen your brothers. And so he does. 

I don’t know about you but I am greatly encouraged by these words.

St. Paul’s Cycle of Prayer: Thursday – The people of Bondeau, Haiti, especially Pere Phanord, the school teachers and medical clinic volunteers, for our Cursillo community.

The Mission St. Clare app and website begin today’s Morning Prayer with a familiar song: Morning has Broken

On this my birthday, I appreciated these words:

Ours is the sunlight! Ours is the morning

born of the one light Eden saw play!

Praise with elation, praise every morning,

God’s recreation, of the new day!

Great reminders as we pray and read the scriptures together, and for me as I begin another trip around the sun. I am a little melancholy today, missing my family but getting to see lots of old friends here at General Convention.

May you remember ours is the sunlight and ours the morning. Praise God’s re-creation of the new day.