An ignored old hymn

Many old hymns are still in regular use today. The one below by Isaac Watts, written in 1719, is a versification of psalm 41. It has for some reason been left out of most modern hymnals.  The understanding of the word "bowels" has changed dramatically in the last 300 years! Apparently bowels at the time of Watts referred to deep feelings.


Blest is the man whose bowels move
And melt with pity to the poor;
Whose soul, by sympathising love,
Feels what his fellow saints endure.

His heart contrives for their relief
More good than his own hands can do;
He, in the time of general grief,
Shall find the Lord has bowels, too.

His soul shall live secure on earth,
With secret blessings on his head,
When drought, and pestilence and dearth
Around him multiply their dead.

Or if he languish on his couch,
God will pronounce his sins forgiv’n;
Will save him with a healing touch,
Or take his willing soul to Heav’n.

This L.M. version of Ps. xlii., stanzas 1-3, which was published in his Psalms of David, &c, 1719, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, appears in some collections as "Blest is the man whose mercies move;" and in others, "Blest is the man whose heart doth move," the object being to get rid of the, to some, objectionable expression in the first line. These changes are adopted both in Great Britain and in America.
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

A prayer from Sri Lanka

O God,

make me a human being who is

strong-minded

imaginative

level-headed

sympathetic

a human who knows his mind

and is not afraid to speak it.

Amen

New Zealand Lord's prayer

Father and mother of us all,

Loving God, in whom is heaven;

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!

The way of your justice be followed

by the peoples of the world!

Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!

Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth!

With the bread we need for today, feed us.

In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.

In the times of temptation and test strengthen us.

From trial too great to endure, spare us.

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever.

Amen

From a New Zealand prayer book

Tools for love

When we want to fix a screw we should not use a hammer. When we change a light bulb we do not want a spanner. When I cut the grass on a lawn I do not want to use kitchen scissors! These are all tools and good, useful tools they are too, but they are only good when they do what they were designed to do. Try to use the wrong tool and it will take you twice as long and may even hinder your progress if it is any use at all.

I was reading of a development agency that collected money from Christians in wealthy countries and used it to but tools and seeds for villages in Africa. They used an African Church to be the means of getting the tools to the people who could make best use of them.  These tools were accompanied by instructions and training to empower the local people to be able to take control of their own local environment and make a difference in their community.

The tools were inexpensive but by putting the right tools in the hands of the right people huge changes could be achieved as people took responsibility for their own development and saw the potential of what they could now do.

As Christians in the rich world the tool we have to help our brothers and sisters in the poor world are the development agencies that can take the small sums of money which we give and work with local trusted partners to make our love come alive. Christan love in the abstract is a meaningless concept. It needs to be concrete and real to be worth anything and to change the world. Through these agencies we can put our love into action and we can make a real difference.

Wholeness in worship

I recently read a quote from the eighteenth-century revivalist, Jonathan Edwards, who said, 

‘Some bodily worship is necessary to give liberty to our own devotion; yea though in secret, so more when with others . . . ‘Tis necessary that there should be something bodily and visible in the worship of a congregation; otherwise, there can be no communion at all’.

I wonder what he meant by bodily and visible? How can we do that when all we seem to do on a Sunday is sit in rows and sing together and say a prayer together. Are we denying our bodies? I must work on this - how can we be more wholly ourselves when we worship God in the company of our fellow believers.

Grace of God

“Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.” - Karl Barth (May 10, 1886 - December 10, 1968)

 

"Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego." - Simone Weil

Affirmation

With the whole church

I affirm that I am made in God's image,

befriended by Christ, empowered by the Spirit.

With people everywhere

I affirm God's goodness at the heart of humanity,

planted more deeply than all that is wrong.

With all creation

I celebrate the miracle and wonder of life,

the unfolding purposes of God,

forever at work in ourselves and the world.

From a liturgy of the Iona community.

A Lord's Prayer for today

This lovely contemporary version of the Lord's Prayer comes from the Wild Goose resource group of the Iona Community



God in Heaven
your name is to be honoured .
May your new community of hope
be realised on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today the essentials of life.
Release us from our wrongdoing
as we release those who wrong us.
Do not test us beyond our enduring;
save us from all that is evil.
For you embrace justice, love and peace,
now until the end of time. Amen.

Insurrection: To believe is human, to doubt divine

"To believe is human, to doubt divine" is the subtitle of Peter Rollins' new book called Insurrection. In this book Peter Rollins argues that the Christian faith is not primarily concerned with questions regarding life after death but with the possibility of life before death.

I post two quotations from the book. It is high on my list of books that I want to read.

 

"The claim I believe in God is nothing but a lie if it is not manifest in our lives, because one only believes in God in so far as one loves. "


"In the crucifixion we lose the idea of God as the one who justifies our loving engagement with the world by approving of it, but in resurrection we continue to affirm God as we love the world regardless. This is the move that some of the Christain mystics spoke of, a move from the idolotry of doing good for some reason (to get to heaven, to please God, get approval from others), to the act of doing good for no external reward. The former can be described as works based, in that it involves some economic exchange. In the latter we lay down all desire for reward and in doing so experience how love is its own reward. In the very experience of being forsaken by God (crucifixion) we find God in the very affirmation of Life itself (resurrection).
In this new state, the world is affirmed in the deepest and most radical way, not because everything that happens in it is good (indeed, all too often the very opposite is true), but because, in love, we experience creation, in all its brokenness, as wonderful."

Compassion

"The principal of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions and it calls us always to treat all others as we would wish to be treated ourselves."

With these words, Karen Armstrong unveiled the Charter for Compassionon November 9th 2009.  This charter is for people of every faith and those with no faith from around the world. The charter contains the public confession that “we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion."

The Charter for Compassion was devised by Karen Armstrong who has written several books on religion and faith in the contemporary world. She was at one time a Roman Catholic nun before studying at Oxford University and ending up as a teacher. In recent years she has become widely known as a writer and speaker. Her study of the world’s religions revealed very clearly their differences but she identified a common thread that ran through them all. The common thread is compassion.

This dream is not simple or naieve but sums up the aspirations of all thinking and caring people irrespective of their faith. The Charter “impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.”

By early 2012 more than 85,000 people had affirmed the charter online. It has been implemented in various settings. One of the most notable is in a jail in Washington State (USA) where the goal was to decrease violence by 2.5 percent. The project was much more successful than hoped and violence decreased by 100 percent. The creators are evaluating the advantages for the federal government of implementing this program across the country.