Celtic Daily Prayer

We continue our meditation on the Celtic Morning Prayer that is shot through with prayers from Scripture. The next part of morning prayer has the words of Psalm 130:6

My soul waits for the Lord

more than those

who watch for the morning,

more than those

who watch for the morning.

The text uses the image of a night watchman who guards the community through the night. For us today it also raises the 2 questions, how watchful am I and for what is it that I watch.

A young boy looked up at his grandfather and wondered aloud, “Grandpa, how do you live for Jesus?” The respected grandfather stooped down and quietly told the boy, “Just watch.”

As the years went by, the grand-father was an example to the boy of how to follow Jesus. He stayed rock-steady in living for Him. Yet the grandson often lived in a way that was not pleasing to God.

One day the young man visited his grandfather for what both knew would be the last time. As the older man lay dying, his grandson leaned over the bed and heard his grandpa whisper, “Did you watch?”

That was the turning point in the boy’s life. He understood that when his grandpa had said, “Just watch,” he meant, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). He vowed that from then on he would live as his grandfather did—striving to live for Jesus. He had watched, and now he knew how to live.

I recently read, “No matter your age, stage of life, or circumstances, don't forget to dare to dream with God. You don't have to figure anything out. Just keep saying yes to Him, in big ways and small, and watch.”

I dangle my toes over

the curb of my heart,

my toes washed in

those tears racing

towards the storm drain,

my keening words

echoing through the

empty streets;

if you wrote all my sins

on the blackboard

you would run out of schools,

but the Spirit stays after class,

banging dusty death out of the

erasers

begging your pardon

for Crossing

out your work;

more than those

who watch the clock

on the graveyard shift,

i wait (we wait!) for hope

to be the lyrics of

the music of your heart,

more than a rooster

scanning the horizon

for that first glimpse of dawn -

we hope

In you, Amen

Celtic Daily Prayer

We come to part of the daily Celtic prayer with the call: Do you seek Him with all your strength? I wonder, can we respond: Amen. Christ, have mercy?

Scripture often contrasts between weakness and strength. In  Psalm 119:28 we read "My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word."Whilst in Philippians 4:13 we find Paul saying, “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

One day a small boy was trying to lift a heavy stone, but he couldn’t budge it. His father, passing by, stopped to watch his efforts. Finally he said to his son: “Are you using all your strength?’

“Yes, I am,” the boy cried, exasperated.

“No,” the father said calmly, “You’re not. You have not asked me to help you.” The child needed to learn to depend upon his father, as an added source of strength.

I have quoted this verse of Annie Johnson Flint before, When we have exhausted our store of endurance, When our strength has failed ere the day is half done, When we reach the end of our hoarded resources Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

Christ does not require us to solely use our strength, but to use all our strength in tandem with him. Matthew 11:28-30 according to the voice version has the words, “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Put My yoke upon your shoulders—it might appear heavy at first, but it is perfectly fitted to your curves. Learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart. When you are yoked to Me, your weary souls will find rest. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”

In times of weakness and hour of need,

yours is the strength by which we carry on,

the shoulder we rest our head upon.

When our load is heavy and too much to bear,

yours are the arms stretched out to help us

the grace that we depend on.

In times of weakness and hour of need,

your voice is heard,

‘Come… find rest.’

This is grace divine,

the path we tread to wholeness

of body and spirit,

the path that leads to you,

and for which we offer our offering of praise. Amen

Celtic Daily Prayer

Today we consider the use of our mind as we face the call: Do you seek Him with all your mind?

Can we respond: Amen. Lord, have mercy.

When Jesus was in conversation with a lawyer we read, “ Then one of the experts in the Law stood up to test him and said, “Master, what must I do to be sure of eternal life?” “What does the Law say and what has your reading taught you?” said Jesus. “The Law says, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind’, and ‘your neighbour as yourself’,” he replied. “Quite right,” said Jesus. “Do that and you will live.” (Luke 10:25-28 - J B Phillips)

Wasn’t it Frances R. Havergal who wrote Take my intellect and use every power as thou shalt choose? 

A man had bought a new gadget-unassembled, of course--and after reading and rereading the instructions he couldn't figure out how it went together. Finally, he sought the help of an old handyman who was working in the backyard. The old fellow picked up the pieces, studied them, then began assembling the gadget. In a short time, he had it put together. "That's amazing," said the man. "And you did it without even looking at the instructions!" 

"Fact is," said the old man, "I can't read, and when a fellow can't read, he's got to think."

So if we are to seek and love the Lord our God with all our mind surely it must be mean employing our intellect. Another hymn writer puts it so well when he says, Jesus, the very thought of Thee with sweetness fills my breast; But sweeter far Thy face to see, And in Thy presence rest. “

We may well ask, Do I seek God with all my mind and intelligently respond, Amen Christ have mercy.

We thank you, God,

for coming to us as a neighbour, a stranger, an immigrant,

binding our wounds and carrying us to safety,

so that we might love you with all our heart, soul, and mind,

and welcome the stranger,

loving our neighbour as ourselves.

Celtic Dauy Prayer

We move on in our Celtic daily prayer to this call: Do you seek Him with all your soul? Response: Amen. Lord, have mercy. 

In Matthew 16:26 we find Jesus saying to the crowds, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” The word used for soul here can also denote the breath of life, the vital force which animates the body and shows itself in breathing, life itself.

Author John Ortberg describes the soul this way, “We each have an outer life and an inner one. My outer self is the public, visible me. My accomplishments, my work, and my reputation lie there. But inside is my soul that part of me that speaks in silence to others but yells at me. It's the inside stuff of real life - what is your soul saying to you - how is your soul? (Is it connected to the breath of life the spirit or is it deflated by the things of this world and self?)… My inner life is where my secret thoughts and hopes and wishes live. Because my inner life is invisible, it is easy to neglect. No one has direct access to it, so it wins no applause.”

This is soul-life is what we are called to seek God with. John Ortberg continues, “For the soul to be well, it needs to be with God. The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites.”

O Jesus!

My soul thirsts for you! – for your Spirit’s living waters;

Your love is better than life! – better than any other thing;

My whole being from the inside out yearns for your presence;

Your presence with me is the only thing that satisfies me;

My personality clings to you to hold me together, upright;

Your personality – wonderfully complete – is what embraces me;

My inner depths look up to you, longing for your smile;

Your deep mercy and grace is all that I live for;

My soul cries out to you, to flow in your life now and forever.

Your life in me and through me to others is my greatest joy. Amen

Celtic Daily Prayer

The Celtic Morning Prayer now has more specific question - “Do you seek Him with all your heart?” That asks for the response: “Amen. Lord, have mercy.:”

We start our biblical heart search with Jeremiah relaying Å the words of the Lord, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (29:13) Earlier, Jeremiah  reveals that God even gives us the means when he says, “ I will give them a heart to know me.” (24:7)

To seek God with all your heart is all about having a love and a passion for God. With such heart passion we will become the person God wants us to be:

• When God is your First Love. God loves us as His first love, and He loves us more than anything else that He has created. God wants us to love Him back this way… to love God more than anything else or anyone else.

• When in your heart God is your Treasure. God sees us as very special and precious treasures, and we are more special and valuable to God than anything else He has created. God wants to be our Treasure, so that we will value Him more than anything else.

• When in your heart God is your Passion. God is passionate about us, and has a passion to have close fellowship with us. He wants to be our passion, where we are more passionate about God (and the things He is passionate about like saving lost people…) than anything else.

Louis Albert Banks tells of an elderly Christian man, a fine singer, who learned that he had cancer of the tongue and that surgery was required. In the hospital after everything was ready for the operation, the man said to the doctor, “Are you sure I will never sing again?” The surgeon found it difficult to answer his question. He simply shook his head no. The patient then asked if he could sit up for a moment. “I’ve had many good times singing the praises of God,” he said. “And now you tell me I can never sing again. I have one song that will be my last. It will be of gratitude and praise to God.”

There in the doctor’s presence the man sang softly the words of Isaac Watts’ hymn,

I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve Breath,

And when my voice is lost in death,

Praise shall employ my nobler power;

My days of praise shall ne’er be past,

While life, and thought, and being last,

Or immortality endures.

For our prayer today we use the hymn of Charles Wesley

1 O for a heart to praise my God,

a heart from sin set free;

a heart that's sprinkled with the blood

so freely shed for me:

2 A heart resigned, submissive, meek,

my great Redeemer's throne;

where only Christ is heard to speak,

where Jesus reigns alone;

3 A humble, lowly, contrite heart,

believing, true, and clean,

which neither life nor death can part

from him that dwells within:

4 A heart in every thought renewed,

and full of love divine;

perfect and right and pure and good —

a copy, Lord, of thine.

5 Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart,

come quickly from above;

write thy new name upon my heart,

thy new best name of Love.

Celtic Daily Prayer

We continue to discover God in his temple as in the Celtic morning prayer we respond to the Call: Who is it that you seek? And Respond: We seek the Lord our God.

Such a simple yet profound phrase; the Lord our God. Right back in Deuteronomy 6:4 we read, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” As the children of Abraham this is not a bad starting place for us. Jesus referred to Himself as “Lord” many times for example, concerning his preparation to enter Jerusalem on a donkey he is recorded as saying,  “If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’ (Luke 18:31) In John 13:13 we here Jesus saying to his disciples, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.. And when we compare the Old Testament with the New, we find several times when the “LORD” (Yahweh) of the Hebrew Bible is equated with the “Lord Jesus” by the apostles. 

Seeking to know God better, John Chrysostom became a hermit in the mountains near Antioch in A.D. 373. Although his time of isolation was cut short by illness, he learned that with God at his side, he could attend alone against anyone or anything.

That lesson served Chrysostom well. In A.D. 398 he was appointed patriarch of Constantinople, where his zeal for reform antagonised the Empress Eudoxia, who had him exiled. Allowed to return after a short time, Chrysostom again infuriated Eudoxia, who sent him away again. How did Chrysostom respond to such persecution? With these words:

“What can I fear? Will it be death? But you know that Christ is my life, and that I shall gain by death. Will it be exile? But the earth and all its fullness are the Lord’s. Poverty I do not fear; riches I do not sigh for; and from death I do not shrink.”

Perhaps the words of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy of War and Peace fame are worth considering today. “Don’t seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.”

Give me a deep hunger for you. Fill me with your Spirit, that I would seek you more, that I would love you more, and that my mind would be filled with more of you. Help me as I go through this day, that I would see each challenge as an opportunity to worship and serve you. May you be glorified with how I live this day. Amen

Celtic Daily Prayer

As we move on into 2024 we will take a fresh look at Celtic spirituality as exercised by the Northumbria Community. The Northumbria Community is a dispersed network of people, hugely diverse, from different backgrounds, streams and edges of the Christian faith who follow a Celtic rule of life, praying Morning, Midday, Evening and Night. We start by looking at the Morning Prayer and see how it can apply to our lives in 2024.

One thing I have asked of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life;
to behold the beauty of the Lord
and to seek Him in His temple.

Of this prayer, I want to concentrate on our understanding of what ‘His Temple’ means in our context. In  1 Corinthians 3:16 we read, “You realise, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalising God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.” (The Message)

So, when we pray the morning prayer that we might see the beauty of the Lord and seek him in his temple we are really looking for the presence of God in us! Robert Boer puts it this way, Bethlehem was God with us, Calvary was God for us, and Pentecost is God in us. To Paul, the Church was the very temple of God because it was the society in which the Spirit of God dwelt. As Origen later said, "We are most of all God's temple when we prepare ourselves to receive the Holy Spirit."

In the booklet My Heart, Christ’s Home (InterVarsity Press, 1954), author Robert Munger imaginatively describes the Christian life as a house. 

“When Jesus enters, He goes from room to room. In the library of our minds, Christ sorts through the garbage, cleaning out the worthless trash. In the kitchen, he deals with our unhealthy appetites and sinful desires. At the dining room table, He serves us the bread of life to satisfy our hungry souls and pours living water for us to drink and never be thirsty again. Through dark hallways and cupboards, Jesus uncovers all the places where sin hides. He works His way through every nook and cranny until His love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace have filled every space.” 

This allegory presents a beautiful picture of what it means to have Christ in us. So here is a new emphasis for a new year - to seek God in his temple.

Holy Spirit,

The Consoler,

Spirit of Truth,

You who are present everywhere and fill

the universe…

Source of life:

Come and take up your dwelling in us.

Cleanse us.

And, in your love,

lead us to Salvation.

Amen.