Tonight we are doing a workshop and worship on prayer.Prayer is our basic communication with god. We are often dissatisfied about its quality.Worship is our weekly prayer service, the fundamental honoring of the Sabbath Commandment. Usually, we ask God for help and stumble about. Sometimes we may draw on inspirational sources throughout the long history of the faith to find some words, or at least a form for our prayers.The psalms give us 150 sets of instruction in prayer. We read them and sing them.Our hope is that they become part of one’s spiritual structure. -light and salvation and fear-Limburg--why pray when you can worry--God gives us just a pottery lamp’s worth of light, just enough to take a few more steps. You have to trust God with that kind of light.“The Lord is my light; whom shall I fear?” We fear the future -- but with God as our light, that small flicker banishes the darkness, and we are not alone.“I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” (verse 13) -- that faith is not merely about the pledge of eternal life in another world, but it is in this world, not merely some spiritual realm,.Presence of god is pervasive(Howell) The psalm is not a one-note prayer-it has an internal narrative that moves from state to state. It reflects what we often go through when confronted with dangers. It moves in a pattern. I wonder if the first part is a bit of whistling in the dark.The psalm’s emphasis on trust allows the confidence, the security, the stable place in dizzying change. It anchors our lives.
The bible introduces us to enacted prayer, prayer as action. BOO mentions: cutting of a covenant/cut a deal -meaning they find wholeness only in the relationship-symbol of inner self?-disloyalty will tear them apart-?Abram has amen faith-trust supported reliable faith as fidelity. I dislike the antiquated or Kentucky version of reckoned here-it seems here to have a sense of intention matched by outcome-this is in a vision as it moves beyond the reality of the senses to the radical grasp that a change is going to occur in spite of evidence to the contrary-this is the way the world is moving. The trouble is that we are time-bound and waiting is hard for us as the clock ticks away One of prayer’s tensions is .Maybe only the relationship itself holds the parts together. It feels both primitive and very deep this image, as if in the vision we are descending into the deep wellsprings of human interaction and the very roots of religion.
Jesus rejected a guarantee of protection last week. Now his usual opponents try to keep him safe. Jesus seems to regard this as another example of the testing, a she has set his face to Jerusalem and death. lament over Jerusalem and the mother hen image.Jesus sees the looming destruction, maybe the 40 year in the future levelling of the temple and laments.Other avian images are one of powerful protection, but this one is one of anxiety and fluttering.Lament is a vital form of prayer. the plurality of psalms reflect it. Lament is an especially intimate form of prayer as it trust god to show not a positive self but a needy one.As citizens of heaven, we live in a foreign land where self-aggrandizement and self-satisfaction are prized. enemies of the cross as enemies of transformation??If you will prayer is the connection we make with heaven and earth.
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