Another aspect of the Kingdom of God on earth, brought up by the typhoon, is that there will be no more destructive storms. We can deduce this because we have the example of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35-41). After Jesus simply speaks to the storm, "Quiet! Be still!", the wind dies and the waters are calm. Then he chastises the disciples for not having enough faith. They had not recognized that his miracle-working power extended to storms even though they had already seen him heal many people and cast out demons. As Jesus healed people, he taught them that "the Kingdom of God is near" so they should "repent and believe the good news" (Mark 1:15). This was a new kingdom, not like any other kingdom they had ever seen. Did they have the faith to believe it and to tell others about it and demonstrate how it was different? For reflection: Do I believe that the Kingdom of God on earth is near? That it is different? Do I have the faith to calm storms? If I banded together with other people, would I have the faith to stop typhoons? Let us pray. Jesus, I've never even prayed to stop a storm before. I've always just prayed for the people to endure and recover. Help me have the faith to believe and to act when there is a threat.
0 Comments
Reflecting on the Lord's Prayer this week (Luke 11:2-4), it is difficult for many of us to imagine what it means to pray "your kingdom come" because we don't have a concept of what God's kingdom on earth might mean. We often think of God's kingdom on earth as "already, but not yet", present in some form but not complete. In fact, on many days when the reality around us gets us down, we think there is no presence of God's kingdom on earth at all. But St. Paul tells us that what we need is faith because "faith is the substance of things hoped for and the proof of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1). On those days when we don't see the kingdom of God around us, faith tells us it is there. It is there because Jesus has been here to inaugurate the Kingdom of God on earth and because our prayers - "your kingdom come" - continue to bring it about. In fact, "Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future" (Spe Salvi 7). By prayer, faith acts to bring the future about. For reflection: What future reality is my faith bringing about? Let us pray. Jesus, we join with you in prayer, "Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come." There is another short story in Luke about being persistent and bold about asking for what you need. Jesus proposes the following scenario: "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' "Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs" (Luke 11:5-8). For reflection: Put yourself in the picture. With which man do you identify - the one asking for the bread or the one being asked for bread? Are you outside asking for a favor, or inside not wanting to be bothered? Let us pray. Father, here I am knocking on your door. I hate to bother you again, but you said to be persistent and bold, so here I am. I need . . . . We interrupt our story of Cornelius, the Roman officer, to let you know what is happening with Peter. We skipped over Acts 9:43 about Peter staying in the home of a tanner named Simon. Since a tanner handled dead animals, Simon would be considered "unclean". So Peter was breaking a Jewish tradition, and making himself ritually unclean, by staying with Simon. About the time Cornelius is sending his men to bring Peter to his house, Peter has a vision wherein a voice tells him to "kill and eat" all the kinds of unclean animals he is seeing. Peter refuses because he has never eaten unclean foods before. The voice says, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." Peter carries on this exchange three times (Acts 10:9-16). Peter comes out of the vision, and while he is still thinking about it, the Holy Spirit tells him three men are coming to fetch him (the ones sent by Cornelius) and he should go with them. The next day Peter and a group of disciples set out for Cornelius's house. Going into the home of Cornelius, a gentile, also breaks another Jewish tradition which would again make Peter ritually unclean just as staying in the home of Simon the tanner did. But now Peter realizes the message God was giving him in the vision - he should not call any person unclean (Acts 10:27-29). For reflection: Am I judging others as being "unclean", beneath me or not worth my time? (By the way, I saw Woody Allen's movie "Blue Jasmine" over the weekend, and it has this same theme. The truths of the Gospel are always current.) Let us pray. Father, forgive me for the times when I have looked down on others, turned them away, passed them by. Help me to see all people as persons you have created and whom you love. Help me to see them and love them as you do. Were these people who were healed or raised from the dead anybody special? Not necessarily. We don't know anything about Aeneas except that he had been bedridden for eight years. Tabitha though was well-loved for doing good and helping the poor. Perhaps she was a seamstress since the story mentions the clothing she had made (Acts 9:36-39). But the people healed by the disciples, and by Jesus, were ordinary people. They were not the leading citizens of the day, the politicians or the preachers. They didn't do anything to "earn" being healed or raised from the dead. It was just that someone loved them enough to bring them to Peter's attention. In Aeneas's case they asked for healing. In Tabitha's case they didn't even do that. They were already mourning her death and Peter had to send them out of the room so that he could pray, seek the Lord's guidance and act on it. We know from the Gospel accounts, Peter was not a perfect person. Presumably Aeneas and Tabitha were not perfect either. Healing does not seem to depend upon our perfection, but on God's. For reflection: Have I not asked for healing for myself because I didn't think I deserved it? Have I not prayed with someone else for their healing because I didn't think I was good enough? Let us pray. Father, I thank you that Jesus prayed for me before I ever heard of him. I thank you that Jesus died for me when I could never deserve such a sacrifice. I thank you that in your great goodness and your perfection you remember me every day whether I remember you or not. I thank you that others have prayed for me too. Now I offer myself to pray for others as you lead me to do so. "Please come at once!" the messengers urged Peter. The beloved Tabitha had died (Acts 9:36-43). Why send for Peter when someone has died? What did they expect him to do? Did they want him to be there to mourn with the community, or lead a memorial service? Or did they hope he would raise her from the dead? Peter expelled the crying mourners from the room. He knelt, prayed, and then commanded Tabitha to get up. As with Aeneas (Acts 9:32-36) we see Peter use the command, "Get up." We don't know what Peter prayed while kneeling. Perhaps he was seeking the Lord's direction on whether to raise the woman back to life or let her go. And hearing that direction, he simply commands her. The faith to command, as we mentioned last week, comes from knowing the Lord's will. The purpose of healing Aeneas and raising Tabitha was two-fold: it was for the benefit of the person and it was for the benefit of the many people who heard about it and believed. Many more people came to believe in Jesus because of Aeneas and Tabitha. For reflection: People are still being healed and raised from the dead today. They may live next door to us or they may live half-way round the world and we find their stories on YouTube. The question, though, is still the same as it was in the time of Jesus - will we believe? Let us pray. Lord Jesus, I pray with the father in Mark 9:24 - "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" How did Philip witness to the Ethiopian man (Acts 8:26-40)? Being divinely guided to meet this man, how did Philip proceed? First, he began from where the man was. The man happened to be reading from Isaiah. So Philip knew the man was a Jewish believer. If he got to know him at all, which he must have or we would have no details in this account, he found out that he had traveled all the way from Ethiopia to worship in Jerusalem. So the man is a devout Jew. Philip starts the witnessing conversation with the passage from Isaiah that the man is reading. Second, from that starting point he led the conversation around to Jesus and the good news that the Messiah had come. We don't know exactly how long this conversation lasted. Possibly it lasted several hours. Even so, it was a "quickie". In only one meeting, Philip brings the Ethiopian to belief and even baptizes him. Philip's divine appointment led another person into the kingdom in one day. No doubt the man went back to Ethiopia and told others what had happened. So the Gospel spread even further from that one encounter. Earlier this year at my regular appointment with my hairdresser Thomas, I noticed that he had a large lump on his right wrist. I asked him what was wrong. He said it was a type of tendonitis and that it was so bad he was only cutting hair for two people a day. He had rescheduled all of his other customers with other hairdressers in the salon. He didn't know what was going to happen or how he would continue to support his family. His wrist was not getting significantly better with therapy. Knowing that Thomas is a believer in Jesus, when we finished I asked if I could pray for healing of his wrist. He took me into a small room in the salon and we prayed for a minute or two. Twice it felt like electricity passed between us. When I returned for my next appointment, Thomas's wrist was healed and he was back to cutting hair all day long. This was not a divine appointment, but a regular appointment, used for divine purposes because I was able to step out in faith. I didn't know if Thomas would be healed, but I knew prayer wouldn't make it any worse! I met Thomas where he was - in need of healing. Jesus took it from there. For reflection: Have I missed opportunities to meet people's need for God, for healing? What is holding me back? Let us pray. Holy Spirit, I don't want to miss any more opportunities that you provide. I give you my fears of reaching out to others, of being rejected, of not knowing what to say. I don't want those fears any more. Yesterday at Church we sang the song in the YouTube feature below. It summarizes much of what we have been considering and praying about for the last month - the disciples earliest attempts to live out the commands of Jesus after they were empowered at the Ascension and Pentecost. For a Scripture to meditate on with it, I suggest Luke 4:18-19 There are several versions of this song on YouTube. I liked the pictures with this one the best. Song and lyrics of 'The Summons', or 'Will you come and follow Me'. Words, John L. Bell & Graham Maule, copyright (c) 1987 WGRG, Iona Community, Glasgow G2 3DH, Scotland. Website: wgrg.co.uk. Evidently Jesus healed all of the sick and disabled people who came to him because there is no record in the New Testament of his not healing someone who asked. Sometimes he even healed people because someone else asked (the Centurion's servant in Matthew 8:5-13). Often there is the mention of faith in these healings, but not always. People have searched for some common denominator in these accounts - some surefire method of healing or magic words to say. There are none. This 100% record of healing continued with the early apostles. Following the story of Ananias and Sapphira there is another short summary of apostolic activity (Acts 5:12-16). So many people were being healed by the apostles that "people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed." If healing was such a constitutive part of the ministry of Jesus and the apostles, why do we not see more healing today in the Christian churches? Some say that the gifts in the early church (healing, prophecy, tongues) were not intended to last long. They were simply to get the church started. I disagree. Jesus said we would do the things that he did (John 14:12-14). He was here among us to set the example and that example clearly included healing. For reflection: What do I believe about healing? Have I/Could I pray with someone to be healed? Let us pray. Jesus, you are the Lord of Healing, the Source of Healing. Heal my unbelief and help me to step boldly out in any areas of ministry to which you are calling me. Since we've been looking at the healing of the beggar at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, let's spend a few moments with phrases from Peter's speeches following this act of healing kindness (Acts 3:12-4:20). Surprise . . . author of life . . . name of Jesus . . . made strong . . . faith . . . healing . . . as you can see . . . acted in ignorance . . . foretold through the prophets . . . repent . . . times of refreshing may come . . . appointed for you . . . a prophet from among your own people . . . heirs . . . act of kindness . . . Jesus Christ . . . salvation is found in no one else . . no other name . . . what we have seen and heard. For reflection: Read the passage again. What words or phrases stand out? Was I able to perform any acts of kindness this week? Was I able to speak to anyone about Jesus this week? Let us pray. Author of Life, Healer of the Beggar, there are areas where I need healing. Bring times of refreshing to me, please, and help me to share healing and refreshing with others. |
AliceI started this website and blog on May 1, 2012. I am a Catholic who has been in ministry for many years. I first developed what I would call a close relationship with Jesus in the early 1970s. Ever since then I have been praying with people for healing and other needs. It is because I have seen so many of these prayers answered that I am so bold as to offer to pray for you individually through this website and phone line. Archives
July 2021
Categories
All
|