Faith Daily | 19 March 2021
PRAYER of the WEEK Lent Four
Almighty God,
in Christ you make all things new:
transform the poverty of our nature
by the riches of your grace,
and in the renewal of our lives
make known your heavenly glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen APBA p488
GOSPEL for the Day: John 7: 25-30
25 Now some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, ‘Is not this the man whom they are trying to kill? 26And here he is, speaking openly, but they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Messiah?* 27Yet we know where this man is from; but when the Messiah* comes, no one will know where he is from.’ 28Then Jesus cried out as he was teaching in the temple, ‘You know me, and you know where I am from. I have not come on my own. But the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. 29I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.’ 30Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.
GOSPEL Reflection: Contributed by Cheryl Courtice
In these verses we sense the surprise felt that Jesus is speaking openly in the temple. The surprise that this is allowed by the authorities and, surprise surprise, that maybe the authorities really know that this is the Messiah?
People were expecting to be surprised… “When the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.”
They are looking for God in the unexpected, surprising places, not in ordinary places.
“They had to be extraordinary before God could be in them.
The teaching of Christianity is just the reverse. If God is to enter the world only in the unusual, he will very seldom be in it; whereas if we can find God in the common things, it means that he is always present.
Christianity does not look on this world as one which God very occasionally invades; it looks on it as a world from which he is never absent” (William Barclay)
How wonderfully reassuring to be able to see God everywhere, in everything. It reminds me of the line the Les Miserables “to love another person is to see the face of God.”
Thank you God for your omnipresence. Help us to see you in everyone and everything.
Amen.
.
FINAL PRAYER: David Adam “Border Lands”
Lord, today brings
Paths to discover
Possibilities to choose
People to encounter
Peace to possess
Promises to fulfil
Perplexities to ponder
Power to strengthen
Pointers to guide
Pardon to accept
Praises to sing
and a Presence to proclaim.
Amen