Ancient Anglican

Inth ePrayer, we ask that God might feel what we feel, to enter into the dark room in which we find ourselves and sit with us in our pain and vulnerability.

In soothing our suffering, Jesus does not make us stronger. He may not even take away the cause of the suffering itself. But the promise he gives us is that in facing our suffering he will make it known that his grace is sufficient for us. 2 Cor. 12:9.

As followers of Jesus, the promise is that will not escape suffering, but the promise is also that at the depth of our suffering, God will be there and the Holy Spirit will comfort and guide us.

These depths of human vulnerability birth a particular kind of blessedness. What does it mean to find blessing in the darkest moments of our lives?

Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred.

In silence, we come to rest in the ineffable presence of God and come to be patient with God’s own silence. It is in our silence, at the point of exhaustion, that our questions simply melt away, and true rest is found.

The promise that Jesus makes to us is that in our weariness, he will give us rest, and we will find our rest within him.

The Prayer does not ask that the sick be healed, but that they be tended. It does not request a physician but a shepherd. What we are asking, is that God will guide us into the blessings that sickness can provide.

We do not simply have bodies, we are bodies. Pain, pleasure, trauma, and anguish are embodied states.

Rev. Warren invites us to see how the daily act of going to sleep is a spiritual practice of dying in Christ. The benefits of sleep come about when we surrender our own will, and the same is achieved in Jesus.

Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

When we pray for healing or redemption or peace or justice, we are praying for those who work – for scientists, doctors, poets, potters, researchers, retail clerks, farmers, politicians, and pilots – these actual and limited men and women through who God is bringing renewal.