Showing posts with label new year prayers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new year prayers. Show all posts

Saturday, January 03, 2015

A prayer

Prayer of Bishop Thomas Ken,
Bishop of Bath & Wells 1685-1691

Thou, O heavenly Guide of our devotion and our love
by teaching us to pray hast showed us
that Prayer is our Treasury where all blessings are kept,
our Armoury where all our strength and weapons are stored,
the only great preservative
and the very vital heat of divine love.

Give me grace to call on thee at all times by diligent prayer.

Lord, I know my devotion has daily many
unavoidable and necessary interruptions,
and I cannot always be actually praying.
All I can do is to beg of thy love to keep my heart always
in an habitual disposition to devotion,
and in mindfulness of thy divine presence.

As thy infinite love is ever-streaming in blessings on me

O let my soul be ever breathing love to Thee.

Monday, January 07, 2013

New Year Prayers 3 - Prayer of Divine Support


Thou art the blessed God, happy in Thyself,
source of happiness in Thy creatures,
my maker, benefactor, proprietor, upholder.
Thou hast produced and sustained me,
supported and indulged me, saved and kept me;
Thou art in every situation able to meet my needs and miseries.
May I live by Thee, live for Thee,
never be satisfied with my Christian progress but as I resemble Christ;
and may conformity to His principles, temper, and conduct
grow hourly in my life.
Let Thy unexampled love constrain me into holy obedience,
and render my duty my delight.
If others deem my faith folly, my meekness infirmity,
my zeal madness, my hope delusion, my actions hypocrisy,
may I rejoice to suffer for Thy name.
Keep me walking steadfastly towards the country of everlasting delights,
that paradise-land which is my true inheritance.
Support me by the strength of heaven that I may never turn back,
or desire false pleasures that will disappear into nothing. 
As I pursue my heavenly journey by Thy grace
let me be known as a person with no aim but that of a burning desire for Thee,
and the good and salvation of my fellow men and women.

comment: not quite sure where this comes from, I think it's of Puritan stock. The opening line is a cracker, and like every great prayer it begins with God and not with us. The 4th section seems increasingly relevant, not as an excuse to be an idiot, but because, in an increasingly post-Christian UK, fewer and fewer people will understand Christianity, and what makes Christians tick. It's familiar to anyone who reads the comments on any online Guardian religion piece. 

It therefore shouldn't surprise us, though we should be concerned, that a secular court can pronounce that Sunday isn't a special day for Chrisitans. Despite a growing number of non-Sunday gatherings, Sunday is still the main day of worship, fellowship and teaching for the Christian community, and the court seems to have bought the lie that 'you don't have to go to church to be a Christian'. Maybe we are in for a more 1st and 2nd century church, where Christians met before or after the working day on a Sunday for worship. 

But in the meantime the prayer reminds us that the focus is Jesus, becoming more like him, keeping our eyes on him, following his path, because it's his approval that matters most. 

Sunday, January 06, 2013

New Year Prayers 2 - Prayer of Thomas Ken

Ken was a hymnwriter, poet, and Bishop of Bath and Wells in the late 1600's/early 1700s. Indulge me in the font, I think it goes with the olde English


Thou O heavenly Guide of our Devotion and our Love,
by teaching us to pray, hast shewed us
that Prayer is our treasury where all Blessings are kept,
our Armoury where all our strength and weapons are stored,
the only great preservative,
and the very vital heat of Divine Love.
Give me grace to call on thee at all times by diligent Prayer.
Ah Lord, I know my Devotion has daily
many unavoidable and necessary interruptions,
and I cannot always be actually praying,
all I can do is to beg of thy Love,
to keep my heart always in an habitual disposition to Devotion,
and in mindfulness of thy divine presence,

O my God, as thy infinite Love
is ever-streaming in Blessings on me;
O let my Soul be ever breathing Love to thee.

comment: I love this, both for the fabulous imagery, and the down to earth realism 'unavoidable and necessary interruptions'. That picture of a flow of love to and from the Father, if I can just be there for 2 seconds a week, would be quite something. And those 4 descriptions of prayer in the first section say more than a lot of entire books. And blogs.

Saturday, January 05, 2013

New Year Prayers - 1 The Methodist Covenant Prayer


I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
exalted for you or brought low for you.

Let me be full, let me be empty,
let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things
 to your pleasure and disposal.

And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

comment: this prayer should come with a health warning. If you pray it and mean it, then be prepared for God to take you seriously. If you pray it and don't mean it, why? Better not to pray it at all, even if it's things you'd like to be able to pray sincerely.

In that respect it's a bit like a lot of hymnody - Christians will easily lie if you set the words to a tune: 'All to Jesus I surrender' (really?) etc. We've begun used to saying and singing words as aspiration rather than declaration, hoping that by saying them often enough we'll eventually mean them. The opposite happens - we become so used to our lips writing cheques that our lifestyles don't cash that the words themselves become worthless. 

So, careful with this one. And (see the post before this one) only pray it if you're praying it with a community, this is virtually impossible to follow through on if you're going solo.