Ancient Anglican

She ends this chapter with the promise that God does make: “he will keep us close, even in darkness, in doubt, in fear and in vulnerability. He promises that we will not be left alone. He will keep watch with us in the night.”

The question, therefore, that we must face is “How do we trust a God who does not stop [bad things] from happening? How do we dare ask him to keep watch?”

When we pray the prayers we’ve been given by the church – the prayers of the psalmist and the saints, the Lord’s Prayer, the Daily Office – we pray beyond what we can know, believe, or drum up ourselves.

As I prayed that night, I wanted to believe the things I proclaimed: that God knew and loved me, that this terrible moment, too, would be redeemed. I believed it and I didn’t. Reaching for this old prayer service was an act of hope.

In her book, Rev. Warren seeks to guide us into a very heart-centered experiential contemplation of our relationship with God, even when it seems that God may be absent.

A Preview of our studies for 2023. We hope you can join us at 6pm every Tuesday in 2023 beginning January 10.

The carol instructs us to listen – not to do, not to speak, not to plan – but to simply listen to the Good News of the birth of the Savior, and to simply listen to the angelic praises being sung.

Like Whitfield’s ignoring Wesley’s instructions concerning words, so Cummings ignored Mendelssohn’s directions concerning music. Therefore, for Christmas 1856, Cummings put Wesley’s words (as amended by Whitfield) to Mendelssohn’s tune, thus giving us the Christmas carol that we sing today.

Christmas is not simply a historical event that happened in a land far away a long time ago but is an event that actively and presently occurs in your life and throughout the Church here and now.

Just before Christmas 1868, Brooks wrote this carol about his experience that Christmas Eve night in Bethlehem. Brooks intended the carol to be sung by the children’s choir that Christmas.

Dissonance, however, resolves to consonance. How do we make sense of the angelic proclamation of peace and goodwill when that is not part of our observed reality?

“In despair I bowed my head; ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said . . . Then pealed the bells more loud and deep; ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.’”