I look forward to our gathering this evening. Dinner begins at 6. The menu is chicken hash brown potato casserole, with a tossed garden salad, and a chocolate-vanilla pudding parfait for dessert. If you have any Prayers or Thanksgivings that you wish to insert into the Compline service, please let me know.
In my readings this weekend, I came across a sermon by that esteemed Anglican priest, John Wesley, which is somewhat relevant to Paul’s admonitions in the first part of Ephesians 5. In this sermon on Ephesians, Wesley discusses what is required of a Christian and says (not to make your mind soft but your heart) that:
the merciful God regards the lives and tempers of men more than their ideas. I believe he respects the goodness of the heart rather than the clearness of the head; and that if the heart of a man be filled (by the grace of God, and the power of his Spirit) with the humble, gentle, patient love of God and man, God will not cast him into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels because his ideas are not clear, or because his conceptions are confused.”
Paragraph 15, “On Living Without God” (Sermon #125)
So sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 5:19