Praying Together 1st June 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 Ascension Day 2025

Collect

Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we in heart and mind may also ascend and with him continually dwell; who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Acts 1:1-11

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Luke 24:44-53

Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Please enjoy this Meditation by Nick Fawcett, one of his final posts.

https://nickfawcett.uk/

The meditation of the Apostle Philip
You’d think we’d have been dismayed, wouldn’t you –
to lose Jesus again, so soon after he’d come back to us.
After all, we’d been shattered the first time,
left floundering like fish out of water once deprived of his presence.
True, this time was different –
no cross,
no agony, torment and death –
but he was gone nonetheless,
snatched away from us once more.
Only he wasn’t,
that’s the strange thing.
He was with us much more meaningfully,
not in the flesh but in Spirit –
around us,
beside us,
beyond us,
within us,
touching our lives in every part.
I can’t quite explain it,
but suddenly we knew he was closer than we’d ever dreamt –
for he was not just the Messiah,
the risen Lord,
but God himself,
one with him,
one with us,
the divine in human form.
We’d walked and talked with him,
and we finally realised that we’d do so always, to the end of time.
No wonder he blessed us when he took his leave,
for though he’s far away now at the Father’s side,
through his Spirit he couldn’t be more near.

Prayer
Creator God, mighty and mysterious,
awesome beyond words,
thank you for making yourself known to us in Christ –
for sharing our humanity,
walking our earth,
becoming one with us through him.
Lord Jesus Christ,
thank you for breaking down the barriers that separate us from the Father,
for helping us not just to know but to relate to God firs-hand.
Thank you that through your living, dying and rising among us
we can experience the gift of your Spirit,
your living presence deep within.
Open our eyes each day to the wonder of who you are
and of everything you have done,
and help us joyfully to worship you,
our risen, ascended Lord.
Amen.

This song by Mary Black, ‘Bless the Road’, while written as from a parent whose child is leaving home alone for the first time – maybe first day at primary school, going to college, beginning an independent life – always puts me in mind of the thoughts and blessing of Jesus as He prays for His disciples before His Ascension.