Mid Week Reflection and Prayer

Here is our midweek Reflection and Prayer from Rev Derek Akker: As Lockdown loosens (1)

Sunday 14^th June must have been a great day, for some of you, coming together for worship, albeit without hymns but I imagine there was some glorious organ music. A very special Sunday.

As you met in Haarlem and we wait, in the UK, in hope we cannot escape the realities and pain of the past months. We look forward in hope and try to hold in balance of the recent COVID19 experience and our call, as a Church, to be a sign of hope in our community.

As the lockdown loosens it is good to reflect on our COVID19 experiences and to find opportunities to talk about them, to listen to other and to share our experience. This catharsis can be helpful but it also has a spiritual dimension. It may be painful to hear the COVID19 pandemic is not over and we need to be mindful of this and take of ourselves and others.

So to our time of prayer and reflection. I recently can across a hymn by Andrew Brown which is available online from the Methodist Church. It catches the moment well and perhaps may touch a few raw nerves and highlight some of our sensitivities. Hymns can become prayers, so let us pray:

Read through the hymn slowly, pausing at the end of each verse and in the quietness of your heart bring before God how the words may have touched you. It may be that at this time a quiet response may not sum up your feelings, in that case speak out aloud or even shout. Remembering that God is there and with tenderness hears.

When life is shaken to its core,

when clouds and storms arrive,

we find it difficult to know

God present in our lives.

Yet there’s no misery or grief,

pain, doubt, or emptiness,

that is not known by the divine

and filled with tenderness.

Pause

When we are tempted to give up,

and purpose drains away,

where is the God of hope and joy?

Can peace replace dismay?

God, in the centre of our pain,

makes of our dark a tent,

a holy place of tearfulness

as life splits and fragments.

Pause

We need to learn to trust and know

God in our lives, God here

hidden within the clouds and storms,

one with our doubts and fears.

This is our peace: that in the depths

of our adversities

we find a God who shares our pain

and life’s cruel miseries. Amen

Hymns online stfplus@methodistchurch.org.uk

Andrew Brown does not pull his punches in this hymn, some may think he is too honest but I don’t think so. I think he expresses what so many Christians have felt and perhaps have struggled to find the words to express their feelings.

I suggest reading through the hymn again, prayerfully and then ……

Lord, I have shared my feelings, my pain and my uncerta