Faith Daily | 25 August 2022

PRAYER of the DAY - APBA p574

Creator God,

you have made us for yourself,

and our hearts are restless

until they find their rest in you:

teach us to offer ourselves to your service,

that here we may have your peace,

and in the world to come may see you face to face;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

GOSPEL for the Day: Matthew 24: 42-51

42Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. 45“Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time? 46Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. 47Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. 48But if that wicked slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ 49and he begins to beat his fellow slaves, and eats and drinks with drunkards, 50the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know. 51He will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

GOSPEL REFLECTION: Rev’d Jan

It would seem that part of our staying awake, our readiness for our Lord, is accepting the wisdom of St Augustine’s prayer that is the weekly Collect….

“our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you”.

It is that feeling of things not being completely right; of finishing a day with that sense we could have done better; of waking in the morning with regret. Our restlessness can take us in many directions, including the false belief that we can solve this in our own way, by our own methods. We will live in perpetual restlessness with that approach.

I preached on Sunday on the ‘Sabbath Principle’ that we are called into with Jesus Christ. ‘Sabbath’ coming from shabat, the Hebrew for ‘resting’ that God did in the creation narrative… “God rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done”.

We are called to rest in God; Jesus Christ is our sabbath.

FINAL PRAYER St Augustine of Hippo

O God, full of compassion, I commit and commend myself to you, in whom I am, and live, and know. Be the Goal of my pilgrimage, and my Rest by the way. Let my soul take refuge from the crowding turmoil of worldly thoughts beneath the shadow of your wings. Let my heart, this sea of restless waves, find peace in you, O God. You bountifully give all good gifts. Give those who are weary refreshing food. Gather our distracted thoughts and powers into harmony again. Set the prisoner free. See, he stands at your door and knocks. Open it to him, that he may enter with a free step, and be quickened by you. For you are the Well-spring of Life, the Light of eternal Brightness, where the just live who love you. Let it be to me according to your word.

Amen.