Praying Together 10th August 2025

So the commandment is a challenge. To love those who betray you. Those who jeer. Those who wield the whips embedded with flint, hammer in the nails, pierce your side.

Meditation for Trinity 8 2025

Collect

Blessed are you, O Lord, and blessed are those who observe and keep your law:
Help us to seek you with our whole heart, to delight in your commandments
and to walk in the glorious liberty given us by your Son, Jesus Christ.

Luke 12: 32 – 40

‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

‘But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’

“Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out”

What treasure is in yours?

The Blues genius B. B. King, tells the story of why his guitar is called Lucille. He was playing in a club in Memphis, Tennessee one night in 1949. A fight broke out, and an open kerosene brazier was knocked over, setting the club on fire. Everybody ran for the door. “But when I got on the outside, I realized that I’d left my guitar inside. I went back for it. The building was a wooden building, and it was burning so fast when I got my guitar, it started to collapse around me.”

He later learned that the reason the container had been knocked over was that the fight broke out over a woman.

“I never did meet the lady, but I learned that her name was Lucille. So I named my guitar Lucille and reminded me not to do a thing like that again… I almost lost my life trying to save the guitar.”

God willing, may your house never catch fire – but if it did, and you could only save one thing, what would it be? Would it be worth losing your life for? And if you did, would you still own it in heaven? What do you own of real and eternal value that you will still own in God’s Kingdom?

And while we think of the things we value most, do we remember that we are of such value to God, that His Son was prepared to go into the flames for us?