St Patrick, Church of Ireland, Kenmare

In ways, the Christian Journey is like a race – a Marathon, not a sprint. The key is endurance, Jesus says. There will be mountains to climb, tears and heartache in the depths of your soul, and it will sometimes feel like it’s impossible to carry on. But the world will continue, and end only in God’s good time.

Every selfless act honours our Christ. In Him, we are one. Whoever we are. We are all His family, and violence against each other is violence against Him.

A Reflection for Sunday 2nd November 2025provided by Reverend Barbara Irrgang-BuckleyJesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.Hymn Put all your trust in God...

There are so many who have been alongside us in our Christian Journey, Paul only being one of them.

We live in comfort, in safety, in freedom, accepted in our community. I wonder how often we send a Thank you to the One who sets us free?

In community we can support each other in love and fellowship and build one another up. And plough on. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

I hope and pray that I shall leave the world in a better place than I entered it, otherwise I shall have wasted the opportunity to live in freedom of body and soul as a disciple of Christ.

‘…make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes…’

It didn’t matter what you had been, said or done – like Paul, you were given the chance to repent.

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.

The heavenly banquet has only one rule of etiquette – That you accept Jesus , the Christ, as Saviour and Redeemer. And then your place and theirs is at the head of His table, alongside Him.

Salvation does not ever come through religious practice – it comes through Christ, the only sinless one, whose sacrifice is given as a free gift in love, to those who can’t help themselves.

We ask that our faith is strengthened in the power of the Spirit when it is tested – and that we will have the courage to live as the Body of Christ, who alone offers life.

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?

In a word, it is all prayer, a rich sequence, choreographed in different moments of gathering, praise, listening and communion.

Jesus comes to us in many ways and with many faces. Are we aware we may ‘entertain Angels without knowing it?

May we never miss meeting your gaze,
in the eyes of our sibling, the stranger.

Always remember that ‘success’ is simply doing His will – it’s not necessarily achieving the outcome we would ourselves consider to be ‘successful’. Leave that definition with Him.