Monday Morning Mail; 9th September 2013

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Good Morning!

Today, the Monday Morning Mail is guest-written by Dom Turner, our trainee-vicar from St John's College.

We live segmented lives. All of us have many different commitments, and all of us play many different roles in our lives: perhaps you work full- or part-time; perhaps you care for children or other relatives; perhaps you're retired or unemployed. All of us have different circles of friends, and different activities and tasks that fill our time.

The temptation is to put God into a 'Sunday box', to fit our worship into one slot during our week and then to forget about it for the rest of the time. Yesterday morning, John preached from Romans 12, and made it clear that this is a tendency we must resist.

Romans 12:1 says that we should, "in view of God's mercy, offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is our spiritual act of worship."

So we need to resist the tendency to think of worship as something that is separate to our day-to-day activities. It's not that we worship while we work, or rest, or play, but that our work, rest, and play is our act of worship. We worship God by scrubbing a floor, or by looking after children, or by dealing with difficult clients, or by watching daytime television. Everything we do is, or should be, an act of worship to God.

In some ways, last night's sermon drilled this point home. Lydia talked about Luke 13, and made the point that the only way through the narrow door is to know Jesus personally. It's easy to assume that our activities, especially our 'Christian' ones, are a good replacement for knowing Jesus. But we need to pray, listen, and really get to know him if we are going to enter through that narrow door, and into the kingdom of heaven.

Here's a prayer for today, from St Richard of Chichester,

Thanks be to you, our Lord Jesus Christ,
for all the benefits which you have given us,
for all the pains and insults which you have borne for us.
Most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother,
may we know you more clearly,
love you more dearly,
and follow you more nearly,
day by day. Amen.

God bless,

John (& Dom)

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