A Christmas Prayer

Lord of all, at whose behest the quiet stars and steadfast moon hang in their appointed spaces and who has bequeathed to us the beauty and bounty of the earth;  God of the unfathomed universe and King of the Angel host, we acknowledge that you are also Lord of our hearts, shepherd of our lives, guardian of our souls and keeper of our treasure.  Ruler of all, we turn our hearts to you and ask you to have mercy on us;  bless us and love us, for we own a fragile holiness.

Under the canopy of your love, O God, we acknowledge your sovereignty, are drawn to your kindness, honour your precepts and praise your integrity. 

We pray for our community, family and friends: 

For those who are hurting today, we pray;  for those who find Christmas difficult.  For those struggling with illness, anxiety, family turmoil or any other trouble.  Grant them peace and the benediction of your blessedness.  We pray for grace and courage in our own trouble.  We pray that we will learn daily, to wait upon you for all things. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers.

Here, and in all our world today, there are good people who are quietly living out your precepts, against the dark backdrop of godlessness, greed, poverty or violence.  Thank you for these lights in dark places.  Bless and protect these salts of the earth. 

For those who are disillusioned;  who hold their broken dreams in trembling hands;  who have known the pain of undeserved dishonour;  who have been betrayed by people they once trusted.  There are so many of us Lord;  have mercy.

We pray for the world and it's people.  Here,  in Australia, we are encircled round about with peace. We can live our fortunate lives unaccompanied by the noise of war.  We ask your blessing on those places which have not this quietude;  whose very hills are barren from the blows of conflict and tumult;  whose cities are broken by the plunder of warlords and the evil of retaliation.  We pray for those people who live daily with the threat of violence, and for those whose minds are distorted by the indoctrination of vengeance. 

Bless those who are forced to flee all they know and hold dear, because of war or famine.  Bless, we beseech you, with your aid, protection and provision.

For those who face the tumult of battle, today, we ask your blessing.  Let your mercy  fall on the innocent and the evil;  the victor and the fallen.

For those who live with constant poverty, or under the threat of violence;  those who have no home;  whose nights are spent in unsafe places;  who are enslaved in any way.  Have mercy on these Lord.

We pray for those in need. For those who live in the shadow of abuse or suffering.  Lord, provide one person in each of these darkened hearts, who will be a light to them.

For those who find it difficult to forgive, bestow grace. For those plagued by bitterness, bring healing.  For those beset with worries, grant resolution of them.  For those whose God is money, allow release.

We pray for those who mourn:  for lost loved ones;  for children straying;  for broken relationships;  for personal hurts and disappointments.

Bless those who are grieving, who are disappointed, disillusioned;  for those who are tempted beyond what they think they can bear. For those unfairly victimized, give your deliverance.

We pray for Ourselves:

In this Christmas season, we look to the Christ child; light of the world, comforter, counsellor, prince of peace, author of love.

The winds of melancholy blow over us all at times and we can’t sense your presence.  We look for signs and miracles and wonder why you are silent in the face of our suffering, and learn at last that the best of your power is your quiet abiding in our hearts,  and the imparting of your beautiful character to us.  You grieve with us when we grieve and you remake the suffering until our souls are bright with the warmth of your flawless and beautiful character and we are strong and happy.

We still believe you, though we can’t always understand, and it’s this kind of faith which can break down strongholds and summon the angel host.

Make us a blessing to someone else.   Herein lies the path to our own healing.

Give us a heart of contentment with what we have, so that we may enjoy your blessings fully, without envy for what others’ have.  Save us, we beseech you, from greed.  We pray against corruption in every place.

We are thankful for so many things;  a warm bed to sleep in;  the quiet respite of holidays;  a sunny place to read and think.  For things which grow;  for insects which are as essential to the earth as the air we breathe;  for fresh water, enough food, medical services.  For these and all your daily bounty, we give you our thanks.  Thank you for people who share with those who have much less.

Christ, whose countenance is always turned kindly towards our frailty, give us grace to run bravely the race of faith, to fight steadfastly the good fight, to love all who cross our path.   Christ, who has promised a harvest of righteousness to those who sow in peace, give us your holy presence today, that we may see our way clearly, without the shadow of ego and willfulness.

Lord of the wise men and the shepherds, help us this Christmas season to remember that the shadow of the cross fell across your manger. 

You were born to poverty and a single mother.  You enjoyed no status or wealth.  Across our world, millions can relate to your circumstances.  We come with the hearts which are empty without you.

May the love of God rest on our  heads;  may the voice of God be in our ears;  may the beauty of God reside in our hearts and may the holiness of God guard our souls.

We gather our prayers together and ask them in Jesus name whose name is above every other name, whose power is above all other powers, whose face beholds God’s face; whose Will commands the angels and whose light will never be extinguished. Amen.

A prayer

 

O

ur Father,

 

We bring you every facet of our human condition.  We commit our lives and all that they are, to you.  We bring you our failures, our anxiety, our fears.  We also bring you, ever, our frail holiness.  Give us courage to face the wretched parts of ourselves, always bringing them into the light of your mercy.

From the rich storehouse of your goodness, you have given us so much;  we know a measure of every lovely, divine attribute because you endow our surrendered souls with yourself..

Our heads are full of dreams;  our hands are full of chattels.  Lord, we offer to you the things which are most important to us.  Sometimes they obscure our connection to you.  We cling to their importance.  But the shadow of the cross will always fall on us;  we are your people.  Help us to live with a clear, uncluttered vision of the things which you hold dear.  S Starr

 

dc

Prayers for first Nation peoples

I have started watching "The Sapphires", a delightful Australian movie about an Aboriginal Girl Singing group.  I was only 10 minutes into this movie, when it took me to another time and place in my life.....

When I was 13, my father sold his half share in the farm where we lived, and moved to the coast.  I had to leave that beloved place;  the land, the open space and the delight of the rolling hills of farming country, in the Central West of NSW, Australia

We moved to a place on the coast, and my father got a job as a labourer in an engineering/manufacturing business. 

I began school at what was to me, a huge school, teeming with strange people;  so different to the little School I'd grown up in at Eugowra;  a school where I knew all the kids by name - there were, after all, only about 300 of them, both Primary and High School grades. In this new, big High School, I was the little bush kid, with the shy demeanour (I was terrified!) and the unsophisticated ways. (I didn't even shave my legs, for goodness sake!)

So began a couple of years, where I always felt like the outsider;  the alien;  the one who was a bit different.  I tended to gravitate to other outsiders, so for the first few months, I befriended a Chinese girl who was even more different than I.

We huddled together at lunch time;  me with my sandwiches and she with her Chinese equivalent. I was teased, of course;  from the loud boy who would call out rude things to me across the playground, to the coolest boy on the bus who tried to make me his conquest (I realized later, all these boys actually fancied me - strange way to show it lads!) or to the other bully boy, who simply taunted me the whole journey.

A particularly cruel girl invited me to have lunch with her group one day, and then began to systematically ridicule everything about me, either with blistering sarcasm or outright verbal abuse.  I had neither the courage or the words to defend myself.  I was like a little rabbit, thrown into an arena of circling wolves. I simply avoided her and her gang.  I also just began to silently and wordlessly ignore her.  She eventually, bored with me,  found some other poor soul to torment.

But there was one group of girls I was truly scared of.  They were the girls from the Aboriginal settlement.  They lived outside the main town, in a designated Aboriginal village.  This was the 60's and such a place would no longer be segregated in this way, today.  I understand so much more now, of the plight of indigenous peoples of my beautiful country, but in the 60's the white Australia policy was still in people's minds, mine included.  .

If you happened to look over at these girls, at lunch time, to where they sat together, they would shout "whatta YOU lookin' at white bitch?!".  This would often be accompanied by curses and threats. You would never make eye contact with these girls and they always hung out in groups.  They would threaten, with very real intent, to come and punch your face in.

I had had no contact with Koori people at Eugowra, except for shadowy figures in the Salvation Army girls home at Canowindra (another small town some 50ks away), where I often went to Sunday School. These were the stolen children, so powerfully told of in "The Sapphires".  I was ignorant

If only then, I had understood more fully how awful it is to be an alien;  an outsider;  someone looked down upon.  I was, after all, white, "normal looking" and not really that different to most of my peers. I was only dorky;  these girls were outcasts. I realize now, they had probably suffered all sorts of bullying and also, I shudder to think, abuse, violence and who knows what else.  They were threatening, because they needed to be, to self-protect.

If only I had been courageous and simply talked to them.  But I was too scared;  to out of my comfort zone. And even in the middle 60's, there was a great divide between black and white.  We patronised our indigenous people;  we tried to provide for them in our own flawed way.  In the end,  from the stolen generation, and the racism,  the worst we did was try to make them white;  tried to envelop them in our culture;  tried to obliterate theirs.  We segregated them and made them dependent on the welfare system. We took their culture and then wondered why they couldn't instantly become part of ours.

"The Sapphires" movie made me think of  those girls this morning because so much of the movie resonated with what these girls must have experienced. I found myself thinking of them and realizing, after all this time,  how school must have been for them.  If it was scary and uncomfortable for me, a little white girl, how much worse must it have been for them;  alienated, disrespected; made invisible;  picked on; looked down on.  And all in their own country;  the country of their birth-right;  the country which had nourished the soul of their people for thousands of years.  Worse than that even, these girls were what was called "half-castes" (appalling word). They were, perhaps, the result of the coupling of white/black people;  often, I believe at the hands of sexual grooming and outright rape, from degenerate male members of the so-called "civilized" culture).

I prayed for these girls this morning. I have no idea what happened to any of them, but I'm guessing many are lost now, either to death, or alcohol abuse or unwholesome lifestyles.

"Lord of all peoples, I intercede for these women, today;  at this moment.  You know who they are.  Bless them with peace today;  bless them with healing;  give them the help and courage they need to build stable and meaningful lives.

Heal their childhood experiences, as you have healed mine. Bless their parents, their sisters, their brothers, their children. Forgive us, the European interlopers, who so sought to envelop their culture in our own.  Thank you for the grace their people often show, in forgiving us.

Begin in these woman, and those like them, a spark of healing;  raise them up to be leaders of their people.  Begin with them, and bring the redemption and renewal of soul, body, mind and spirit of all the people in our land. Whatever spark of your Spirit might be in them, fan that spark to life;  whatever spirit of overcoming and victory might be still alive in them, breathe your love and steadfast presence on that spark and bring it to life, so that they will live with love and victory, overcoming the scars of their experiences in life.

Heal the hurts which have become bitterness;  ours as well as theirs.  Forgive us when our ignorance turns to prejudice.

I intercede for these girls, now my age, who so long ago and with such frightened vehemence, tried to exist in a world so foreign and disapproving;  I pray for others like me, the little white girl from the bush, who took years to realize that their taunts were the shields against their hurt and rejection. In Jesus Name, who understands what it is to be an outcast and rejected, I ask all these things.  Amen."

Christmas blues

I get a bit depressed at Christmas time.  And it is present on a few levels.  Christmas time, with it's expectation of happy families, trains a spotlight on my broken family.  I am divorced and have been for a long time.  My marriage was not a happy one.  I have also been alone for a long time.

And most of the time, I just accept this and live in the moment;  day by day, moment by moment.  I try not to carry the burdens of the past while I am living in the present.

But it's harder at Christmas time.

I have much to be thankful for; I have my two girls and I am very close to them.  And I have a little grand son now, so most of the time Christmas is OK. But there's always that little shadow of grief and regret which remains.

Another reason for that is because my son died 7 years ago, and now Christmas will never be the same, because he will always be missing. 

And the reasons for the depression doesn't stop there, I'm afraid.  I hate the whole tinsel and Santa in-your-face, let's party and over eat and spend all our money, attitude.  We gorge ourselves on food and drink, celebrating.... what?

As a practising Christian, I celebrate the birth of Jesus and we keep it simple.  We don't go overboard with food or alcohol and we keep gift giving non-extravagant too.

For the life of me, I can't see what the secular world sees in Christmas.  They worship the mighty dollar and Santa I guess.  They spend heaps of their hard-earned cash on expensive presents which their loved ones don't need and often throw away. All the tinsel and ornaments end up in land-fill and domestic violence is the end result in a lot of families.

This spoils it for me too.  I find it so hedonistic, selfish, degenerate and offensive.  I wish we could go back to celebrating the birth of the Christ-child;  he who came to bring Life and peace to those who enter into relationship with Him.  I wish the Christian community could move Christmas to another time of the year and we can reverence and celebrate appropriately.  The rest of the secular world can have "Santa Day" or "mighty dollar day"  or "who can get the drunkest" day.

There's even another reason for my depression at Christmas time.  I have a very modest income, and have had for decades.  So when my kids were with me, it was a difficult time, finding the money to buy them something they would like but was within my small budget.  I always felt like my gifts were not good enough. I know that sounds like I was joining the great rush to buy expensive gifts, but it wasn't like that.  I just didn't have enough to buy quality things, so would have to compromise with junky stuff.  I hated it.

So, while I browse and shop this year, this heavy feeling accompanies me;  I wonder if what I'm buying is what they want, and will it be good enough. It's a kind of left-over emotional stone that still weighs me down a bit.

And as I walk through the shops with all the rubbishy "stuff" and the Christmas music and the crowds, I feel like we are cheating ourselves;  settling for the cheap and meaningless and unsustainable, when we could be entering into relationship with the God who made everything;  with the God who sent his son to be like us, so He could understand our sorrow and walk with us through every journey. 

We've swapped the Creator for the crass.

And I find it all a bit depressing.