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Don't just do something, sit there

Don't just do something, sit there 

Jesus said, “But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And here we have to centre of gravity of the Sermon on the Mount.

If you want to change the world you might want to join a political party, a religion, or some pressure group. Then you will have an agenda, a gola and be concerned with success.

Christianity, or rather the established denominations of the Church (which may not be that closely related to Christian faith!)  has played that game.

Jesus has no manifesto for changing the world. Because we can only change the world when we ourselves are thoroughly renewed, growing up into Christ and have the mind of Christ. Then we won't give too hoots about getting political power or being a focus group or a pressure group. We will simply life holy lives, and that really will change the world. And get us into trouble and bring on persecutions. (Remember the beatitudes?)

So, if you're serious about wanting to make the world a better place cancel your political subscriptions and resign from the pressure groups and all the rest. And sit still.

Go into the inner room. There you will be transformed, and your life will change the world around you more than you can begin to imagine. But it won't bring in Utopia. It will be tough, you will meet resistance and hatred. But you will also be a vehicle for God's love, and that's what changes everything.

And you only really need one prayer... which doesn't ask God to change the world, but that the world might accord with God's will, and that the Kingdom will come... but that won't be a political manifestation. It will always be something else.

We need to spend more time on the Our Father, the Lord's Prayer or Paternoster... 

Matthew 6.9 gives us the version we're most familiar with, complete with the doxological end.. "For thins is the kingdom...etc, which may have been added by the early Church.

Luke version is shorter, mentions sins as well as debts and has no doxology. You can find it at Luke 11.2

If this is how we pray, what on earth are all those prayers in our liturgies... never mind all those extemporary prayers full of "justs" and "reallys"?

So we will look at the words... but for this week let's just settle down in the inner room, and follow the Centring Prayer practice. That will put us right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Wonderful... and maybe scary too.




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