New Beginnings

I don’t know about you, but I have never been very good at handling new situations and directions in life. There are times when we choose or appear to have the choice to make a new start or head off on a different track to the one we have been on for quite a while and where we feel comfortable.

I am and have been at the stage for a while now where my life seems to be moving in a different direction. It has given me a sense of nervous and excited anticipation, discomfort, uncertainty and disorientation at different times and sometimes in various combinations of these factors.

One thing I am trying to remember, in all of this, is that there is a greater purpose, and that although the future is always uncertain for us all, “I know who holds the future and He’ll guide me with His hand. With God things don’t just happen, everything by Him is planned.” I remember singing that song at a New Year’s day service and it was followed by the most testing year I had experienced up till then! A friend of mine says, “Don’t fear the future, God has already been there.” I think it’s his motto in life, and he certainly hasn’t had an easy ride!

Looking at our lives from our perspective is a bit like looking at the back of a tapestry or piece of embroidery. All you see is tangled threads and what looks like disorganized chaos, but God looks at it from the front and sees, beauty, order and a pleasing result. If we make it our plan to please Him, He will guide us each step of our earthly pilgrimage. If we have put our trust in  the sacrifice of Jesus in giving His life to save us from our sins, and asked  for and accepted His forgiveness, we have already passed from death to eternal life.

Once we know God through His Son, our Lord Jesus, we get to realize that He is in the business of conforming us to the likeness of His Son, a work that goes on to the end of our earthly life and will only be completed when we go to live with Him for ever. Yes, this involves, sacrifice, trials, temptations and suffering, but there are also foretastes of Heaven, rejoicing, and enjoyment of His creation and the many gifts and benefits He showers on us every day.

God will supply all our needs, see us through the difficult times and ultimately bring us safely into His presence. He will also enable us to cope with changes in our lives and circumstances which to us seem so big at the time but are just a small part of His eternal plan.

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside quiet waters.

He restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Some thoughts about praying

Some thoughts about praying expand

Here are some interesting thoughts about the nature of prayer and being God and Heavenward directed in our praying. I have always found The Lord's Prayer a great help and comfort when I am 'stuck' in my prayer life, and it is interesting to see how it is central not only in Catholic and Anglican liturgies but also in Coptic and Jewish worship. In personal devotion it is also an invaluable aid.

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The Kaddish is a prayer found in the Jewish prayer service. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God ‘s holy name. It is the traditional prayer for the dead in the synagogue. There are variations on the Kaddish, and I offer here the more general form for your consideration: “May the great Name of God be exalted and sanctified, throughout the world, which he has created according to his will. May his Kingship be established in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of the entire household of Israel, swiftly and in the near future; and say, Amen. May his great name be blessed, forever and ever. Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, honored, elevated, and lauded be the Name of the holy one, Blessed is he- above and beyond any blessings and hymns, Praises and consolations which are uttered in the world; and say, May there be abundant peace from Heaven and life, upon us and upon all Israel; and say, Amen.” The striking nature of this prayer for the dead is that it does not mention the dead! The prayer is about God. It reminds me of the time when a funeral services in a traditional liturgical church were about God. It used to be that one heard complaints that the Anglican (or Roman or Lutheran) liturgy for the burial of the dead did not even mention the name of the deceased. Nowadays matters have swung much too far in the other direction. Our funerals in the west are now ALL about the dead. God is mentioned only as a measure of respectability or a desperate attempt to redeem the one who has died. We can learn a lot from the Jewish Kaddish as we think about the prayer that Jesus gave us to pray. We pray also in a similar manner to that of our Jewish brothers and sisters, asking that God’s name be made holy, that God’s kingdom come so that God’s will may be accomplished. We acknowledge God as the source of all earthly blessings. We seek redemption, and we pray that we not fail in our courage at the hour of death and that peace (shalom) will prevail at the end. In the Jewish faith the Kaddish in its various forms is not recited only on special occasions such as funerals. The Kaddish closes every service. The Kaddish is said daily and even several times a day. As one Rabbi says, “Just do it!” One understands why this admonition is so critical to the life of faith, for God is often hidden behind the veil of this life with its suffering and injustice. Prayers like the Kaddish and the Lord’s Prayer not only evoke God’s presence but they also evoke from us a true sense of humanity as we stand before God who made heaven and earth. One of the things that attracted me to the liturgical tradition was the constant use of the Lord’s prayer in the life of the faithful. This was a great contrast with my very non-liturgical (or anti-liturgical) upbringing, in which we were taught to use the Lord’s prayer simply as a model by which we were to pray strictly from the heart. But Jesus did not instruct his disciples to fashion their prayers along the line of a model. He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” (Luke 11:2-4) I don’t think we have any liturgies that are without the Lord’s prayer. It’s almost Pavlovian. When I hear the prayer, I think it is time to leave. One parishioner once worried about our use of the small bell when we pray the Our Father during the Eucharistic prayer. They said, it almost made them salivate for the bread and wine and the future that is promised in the sacred meal. Now that is Pavlovian! But the truth is, we are to pray the Lord’s prayer as often as possible in order that we remain conscious of the truth of the incomprehensible mystery of the presence of God around us mortal creatures who are incomplete without the knowledge that we are loved by this same God. That is who we really are. The Didache, which is one of the oldest manuals on the Christian faith, dictates that we pray this way three times a day. (8:3) In the Coptic liturgy the Lord’s prayer is said over and over again at an incredible speed. For the prayer in its totality evokes the sacred presence. The Lord’s Prayer is a linguistic symbol capable of placing us properly in the world and before God. We should recite the Lord’s prayer as often as possible, as Jesus admonishes in the Gospel. Ignore the wrongheaded advice from simpleminded fundamentalists that would have you believe that any prayer that is written down can not be from the heart. Our Lord has bidden us to pray this prayer. The repetition is nothing other than our persistent turning to God for help, renewal and peace. In this way the prayer delivers the blessing that Christ himself came to deliver—life now and forevermore. When the faithful visit each other at times of illness or in times of grief, it is the Lord’s prayer that most often is the decisive moment among us. As I have visited with those who face surgery or the funeral of a beloved one, I sensed more than once that all the effort that we put into holding ourselves together, of running on our own steam, condenses into the tears of relief that God is here, and in the end it is all about God.

There are variations on the Kaddish, and I offer here the more general form for your consideration:

“May the great Name of God be exalted and sanctified, throughout the world, which he has created according to his will. May his Kingship be established in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of the entire household of Israel, swiftly and in the near future; and say, Amen. May his great name be blessed, forever and ever. Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, honored, elevated, and lauded be the Name of the holy one, Blessed is he- above and beyond any blessings and hymns, Praises and consolations which are uttered in the world; and say, May there be abundant peace from Heaven and life, upon us and upon all Israel; and say, Amen.” The striking nature of this prayer for the dead is that it does not mention the dead! The prayer is about God. It reminds me of the time when a funeral services in a traditional liturgical church were about God. It used to be that one heard complaints that the Anglican (or Roman or Lutheran) liturgy for the burial of the dead did not even mention the name of the deceased. Nowadays matters have swung much too far in the other direction. Our funerals in the west are now ALL about the dead. God is mentioned only as a measure of respectability or a desperate attempt to redeem the one who has died. We can learn a lot from the Jewish Kaddish as we think about the prayer that Jesus gave us to pray. We pray also in a similar manner to that of our Jewish brothers and sisters, asking that God’s name be made holy, that God’s kingdom come so that God’s will may be accomplished. We acknowledge God as the source of all earthly blessings. We seek redemption, and we pray that we not fail in our courage at the hour of death and that peace (shalom) will prevail at the end. In the Jewish faith the Kaddish in its various forms is not recited only on special occasions such as funerals. The Kaddish closes every service. The Kaddish is said daily and even several times a day. As one Rabbi says, “Just do it!” One understands why this admonition is so critical to the life of faith, for God is often hidden behind the veil of this life with its suffering and injustice. Prayers like the Kaddish and the Lord’s Prayer not only evoke God’s presence but they also evoke from us a true sense of humanity as we stand before God who made heaven and earth. One of the things that attracted me to the liturgical tradition was the constant use of the Lord’s prayer in the life of the faithful. This was a great contrast with my very non-liturgical (or anti-liturgical) upbringing, in which we were taught to use the Lord’s prayer simply as a model by which we were to pray strictly from the heart. But Jesus did not instruct his disciples to fashion their prayers along the line of a model. He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” (Luke 11:2-4) I don’t think we have any liturgies that are without the Lord’s prayer. It’s almost Pavlovian. When I hear the prayer, I think it is time to leave. One parishioner once worried about our use of the small bell when we pray the Our Father during the Eucharistic prayer. They said, it almost made them salivate for the bread and wine and the future that is promised in the sacred meal. Now that is Pavlovian! But the truth is, we are to pray the Lord’s prayer as often as possible in order that we remain conscious of the truth of the incomprehensible mystery of the presence of God around us mortal creatures who are incomplete without the knowledge that we are loved by this same God. That is who we really are. The Didache, which is one of the oldest manuals on the Christian faith, dictates that we pray this way three times a day. (8:3) In the Coptic liturgy the Lord’s prayer is said over and over again at an incredible speed. For the prayer in its totality evokes the sacred presence. The Lord’s Prayer is a linguistic symbol capable of placing us properly in the world and before God. We should recite the Lord’s prayer as often as possible, as Jesus admonishes in the Gospel. Ignore the wrongheaded advice from simpleminded fundamentalists that would have you believe that any prayer that is written down can not be from the heart. Our Lord has bidden us to pray this prayer. The repetition is nothing other than our persistent turning to God for help, renewal and peace. In this way the prayer delivers the blessing that Christ himself came to deliver—life now and forevermore. When the faithful visit each other at times of illness or in times of grief, it is the Lord’s prayer that most often is the decisive moment among us. As I have visited with those who face surgery or the funeral of a beloved one, I sensed more than once that all the effort that we put into holding ourselves together, of running on our own steam, condenses into the tears of relief that God is here, and in the end it is all about God.

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