Description
FRANK WHALING
224pp
‘A profoundly thoughtful and helpful book.’
Methodist Recorder
'Refreshing, stimulating and provocative, this month of prayers reflects the riches of Christian spirituality ... a very effective aid for many who seek to find a way of \"praying as they can\".'
The Expository Times
A month of daily prayers that make a real contribution towards daily renewal of the Christian faith. This book contains prayers by the author as well as prayers from Christians through the ages, where helpful to our 21st-century concerns.
Special features include:
- examination of the importance of prayer
- exploration of the need for personal growth and faith
- social and ecological concerns, global issues, women's issues, meditation and individual thought
- prayers that bridge divisions within the Christian tradition
- prayers containing elements from evangelical, liberal and radical traditions
SAMPLE TEXT
Thursday
Approach
My chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever
Praise
I praise you, O Lord, for all the glimpses I have had of your redeeming love. I praise you for your beauty shown forth in the world: for mountains and valleys, for gardens and rivers, for fish and birds, for our mother earth. I praise you for the handiwork of human hands: for cars, and electric lights, for houses and clothes, for things that enrich my daily living. I praise you for the gift of people: for those who serve my needs and refresh my soul, for family and friends, for those saints who have mirrored your love. I praise you that you have not left yourself without a witness in the whole earth: that in all the world’s religions there is evidence of your glory. I praise you for the times of your appearing in the interior castle of my heart: for the beatific sight albeit seen through a glass dimly. I praise you for yourself, your love, and your glory.
Thanks
And so I was taught that love is our Lord’s meaning. And I saw very certainly in this and in everything that before god made us he loved us, which love was never abated and never will be. And in this love he has done all his works, and in this love he had made all things profitable to us, and in this love our life is everlasting. In our creation we had beginning, but the love in which he created us was in him without beginning. In this love we have our beginning, and all this shall we see in god without end. Thanks be to God.
~ Julian of Norwich ~
Meditation
Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, ‘Today I am reminded of my shortcomings. Pharaoh was once angry with his servants, and he imprisoned me and the chief baker in the house of the captain of the guard. Each of us had a dream the same night, and each dream has a meaning of its own. Now a young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. We told him our dreams, and he interpreted them for us, giving each man the interpretation of his dream. And things turned out exactly as he interpreted them to us: I was restored to my position, and the other man was hanged.’
So Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and he was quickly brought from the dungeon. When he had shaved and changed his clothes, he came before Pharaoh.
Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I had a dream, and no-one can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.’
‘I cannot do it,’ Joseph replied to Pharaoh, ‘but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.’
~ Genesis 41:9–16 ~
Joseph is at rock bottom. He is languishing in prison. His fate is in the hands of others, and it is only a pang of conscience on the part of the chief cupbearer that brings a glimmer of hope to his situation. Had he done the decent thing the cupbearer would have helped Joseph on his release. Now, better late than never, he remembers the young Hebrew, still locked in prison, who had interpreted his own dream.
Joseph had always been a ‘dreamer’. He had always been able to go inward as well as live outwardly; he had always had contact with the feminine side of his being as well as engaging in the activities appropriate to his manhood. Indeed his ability to interpret dreams, which would stand him in good stead now, had been a prime cause of his early downfall. It had given him psychic access to God. The problem was that he had used it with arrogance. He was the big ‘I Am’. His forecasts that his brothers’ sheafs would surround his, and that they would bow down to him, although true, were not destined to make him popular with his brothers, nor was the fact that he was the favourite son of his father Jacob.
Thus there had developed the course of events that had led his brothers to conspire against him. Instead of being killed, he had been put in a pit and thence transported into Egypt. Slavery had been succeeded by service in Potiphar's household. Ironically, Joseph's faithfulness in resisting the advances of Potiphar’s wife had led to his present predicament of prison, and the invitation to interpret Pharaoh’s dream.
It is now a different Joseph. He still has the ability to interpret dreams, he still has inwardness, he still has a balance within his personality, but he does not say ‘You bet I can interpret this or any other dream you care to throw at me.’ He says, ‘I cannot do it but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.’ He has the ability to interpret dreams, yet he does not have it, God has it within him. Joseph retains his gifts but they have been tempered by suffering and given into the hands of God.
All of us are unique. We have unique gifts. Some of us are ‘dreamers’, others are not; some of us are practically oriented, others are not; some live more by analysis, others more by intuition; some have a direct sense of the world without, others have an immediate awareness of the world within. God uses the gifts that we have. He does not want us to be anyone else. But he does want us to develop our gifts. He wants us to love ourselves not through self-love but for his sake. When we see ourselves and our gifts in an arrogant way like Joseph did (and his gifts were many), our effectiveness is affected. When we see ourselves as having gifts we do not have, or courting gifts we do not have, or seeing the gifts of others in the light of our own, our effectiveness is equally affected. Part of loving God is loving the self that we are becoming for his sake.
Things turned out well for Joseph in the end. Luck went his way, or perhaps he made his own luck. And even if no cupbearer had remembered his gift of interpretation of dreams, Joseph would have found another providential way along another escape route, or even by staying in prison. For he was right with himself and right with God and right with his own talents. What more can we ask of ourselves and of others?
Petition
Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as though deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward save knowing that we do thy will.
~ Ignatius of Loyola ~