Online Contemplative Worship Blog

 Where your treasure is... I've skipped the bit about fasting as it's a reprise of not doing things in public and moved on to Matthew 6.19 Where is your treasure. That's easy.. where is your heart?  What really matters to you? What do you find yourself thinking about when the every day stuff is taken care of? Your treasure is where your deep down heartfelt concerns are. It may be family, friends, or some passion, good cause, activity or sport. All perfectly understandable. Or it may be yourself, your self image, the degree to which you feel validated, successful or powerful. Do you like to be the centre of attention, do you like everyone to know how good you are at something?  It's easy to criticise this in others... but there will be a bit of that "look at me" in all of us, I'm afraid. We all like to be appreciated. We all want to be affirmed and to some extent, of course, it's very important that we feel that others love us and value us. But... you h...

 The Lord's Prayer We're half way through the Sermon on the Mount. We have discovered that it isn't a list of moral directions, tasks for us to fulfil or ideas for good living for us to aspire to. They are impossible demands, because they demand us to be perfect. And then Jesus tells so to go into the iner room and pray.. and the prayer he gives us is the Lord's Prayer.  The Lord's prayer is short of effusive praise, has no real requests for persoal stuff, doesn't mention people who are ill or have needs, doesn't pray for world peace or justice. God is Father whose name is holy. We pray his kingdom to come. We pray that on this earth his will may be done. We ask for just enough - bread for the morning ... that is just to get us tomorrow. Then we acknowledge that we need to be forgiven, but that we can only be forgiven if we are selves are willing to forgive. That's a significant couple of sentences which is amplified and reinforced by what Jesus says aft...