If God knows everything what is the point of making our confession? Surely the public act of confession in our worship and the private telling our sins to a priest is redundant?
A time of ‘fessing up’, whichever way we are called to do it, is a time of self-discovery and an opportunity to know again how much God loves us.
It is never the amount of prayer that is important, though if you have more time to pray use it, it is ensuring that time for prayer however short, is set aside.
If we do not pray we have no food for the journey, no strength for the service and no courage to help endure the sacrifice.
In a time when, for a season, we can’t enter our churches, the call to ‘pray without ceasing’ reminds us that prayer is not only about holy words in holy places but a yielding of our whole life to the One Who Loves us Best
Lockdown, locked-up, or enfolded?
There are so many voices to confuse us yet if we shut them all out we are even more isolated.
What if we transformed this lockdown into the gift of being safely enfolded with the Good Shepherd when we can listen intently to His words of love and comfort.
There are so many calls on our life and finding a good balance is difficult. As our pilgrimage continues we will need to emphasise some activities over others, but in so doing we must careful to not neglect any of the good things which help our journey homeward.
Thos of use who are not called to literal poverty can sometimes feel as if we have been lumbered with our possessions and the only way to work with them is to deny them. But if we learn to ‘sit lightly’ to them we can begin to see the goods we have as gifts for the furthering of the Gospel.
Those who have more than enough of this world’s goods face the challenge of how much they should give away and how much they should keep for their own well-being. Tithing and other formulae for giving are unequal and still leave us in thrall to our possessions. What is needed is a generous heart alongside an open pocketbook.
Working with posessions is hard. We want to hold on to ‘things’ in the mistaken idea that they will make us more valuable. We are not valuable because of what we hold in our hands but because of whose hand holds us.
The Rule of St Francis was revolutionary in that it took the words of Jesus seriously and they sought to live ‘sine proprio’ without possessions. We however live with them and must be careful how we use them for fear that they may use us.
Suffolk Vicar 