Monday 21 October 2024

Today is Monday the 21st of October in the 29th week of Ordinary Time. Bifrost Arts sing, ‘Wisdom and Grace’. Teach us to number our days That we may apply our hearts to Your ways O! Teach us to number our days With wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace. Wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace You've been our home and our dwelling Our place in all generations. Before the earth or the mountains were formed, Lord, You were God. Teach us to number our days That we may apply our hearts to Your ways O! Teach us to number our days With wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace. Wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace Now the span of our lives, It is made of sorrow and labor As the days pass away like the grass How soon we are gone. Teach us to number our days That we may apply our hearts to Your ways O! Teach us to number our days With wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace. Wisdom and grace Let the work of our hands bring you praise, Set Your favour upon us. O establish the work of our hands, May Your kingdom come! Teach us to number our days That we may apply our hearts to Your ways O! Teach us to number our days With wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace. Wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace Today’s reading is from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Ephesians 2:1-10 You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. This reading considers in turn the past, the present, and the future. Let’s take each of these in turn to lead us more deeply into prayer. First, Paul invites the people of Ephesus to remember a time when they were, or felt themselves to be, far from God. Can you recall a time like that in your own life? Now, says Paul, you have been placed alongside Christ. Not by your own doing, but by God’s freely-given gift. What does that feel like? 'And in the future, you, and each of us, will be sitting alongside Christ, as a witness to God’s merciful love.' How does that sound to you? As the passage is read again, notice the different ways in which Paul emphasises that this is all God’s initiative. Talk for a moment or two, finally, to the God who has raised you up in this way, or to Christ who has accepted you to sit alongside him. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.