Beauty surrounds us, but we usually need to be walking in a garden to know it - Rumi
How often we repeat those familiar words; but do we really mean them, or do we just repeat them by rote?
Recently, in a homily, Father Michael said: "If you really want God's Kingdom to come on earth you need to do more than pray for it." Prayer is the most powerful weapon in our armoury, of course but as St Teresa of Avila once said: “God has no hands but yours...” God needs you, me, all of us to do His Will. Yet with so much violence, hatred and etc., in the world today I can understand why some people simply pull the sheets over their heads muttering “Well, what can I do about it?” But we all have a duty, a responsibility to bring about God’s Kingdom on earth. Others will say: “I am not qualified do anything.” But God does not call the qualified He qualifies the called. Look at the motley bunch of individuals that Jesus gathered round Him to be His disciples; fishermen, tax collectors and the like. None of them was learned in the Jewish law as were the Sadducees or the Pharisees whom you might expect Jesus to call. They certainly were not qualified to heal the sick or preach God’s Word and yet that is exactly what they did and very successfully too! How then, did they manage that? The Bible tells us: ‘When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place..... All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability’ Acts 2:1-4 NRSV. That’s how! And since the Holy Spirit resides in each of us today; we received it at our Baptism and it is nourished at the Eucharist, it enables us to serve God just as those disciples did long ago. Jesus lives within us and fulfils his Divine ministry in and through us. Still we say, “What can I do on my own?” St Paul returns to this question on several occasions in his Epistles to the young churches. Writing to the church at Rome for example, he says: ‘For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.’ Romans 12:4-5 NIV. So, although we may feel that alone we are not be able to achieve a great deal, together and with God within us then: ‘For with God nothing shall be impossible.’ Luke 1:37 KJV. Indeed, Jesus reassures us: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20 NIV. God’s Kingdom will come on earth, but only if we have faith, pray and work together, with God- in- us, to make it happen.
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AuthorI am an Authorised Local Preacher in an Anglo Catholic parish church, in the Diocese of Essex UK Archives
February 2022
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