Praying Together 7th September 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 12 2025

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than either we desire, or deserve:

Pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask save through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.

Luke 14: 25 – 33

Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them, ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate** father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

**N.B. the word used is μισέω (miseō) – which literally means ‘To love less, or to prefer someone or something less than another’ – to translate the word as ‘hate’ implies anger and that is not a valid translation in this context.

er… can I just keep my stamp collection?

No.

Looking for a video for this week’s meditation, I found lots of versions. Most of them were missing a verse. Guess which.

Yup. You got it. The one that begins ‘Take my Silver and my Gold…’

The hymn ‘Take my life’ may possibly be the most difficult in the Hymn book to sing with sincerity. Just look again at what we are asking.

Take my life,
Take my hands,
Take my feet,
Take my voice,
Take my lips,
Take my silver and my gold,
Take my intellect,
Take my will,
Take my heart,
Take my love,
Take myself.

You will notice there are no exclusions. Take my everything, we ask.

Every single thing I am.

So, if we truly offer Him everything, does that leave us with nothing? Quite the opposite. When we give our life to Jesus, it includes the bad bits as well as the good bits. And it is given back to us, sparkling clean and pure. At no cost to ourselves other than a promise to now take on the role of being the body of Christ on Earth, in all we do and say.

And yes, we will find that to be an impossible challenge – but one to which we aspire, with heart and mind and soul (and all the others mentioned above). We miss the mark. Often. Fortunately, and blessedly, we can always sing that hymn again. The Lord will never tire to hear it and respond in unending sacrificial love.