From the Minister's Desk
March 2010

Easter is nearly on us.

A year ago, I suggested that Lent had begun to be seen as a time for giving things up, silly things like chocolate, ice creams, a bad habit, coffee.  It almost had turned into a sort of New Year Resolution time, but it was never intended to be that.  In the days of the early church the people who wanted to become Christians had to go through a very long period of learning before they were allowed to become a part of the church.  It was good sense too.  Being a Christian takes a lot of dedication and in the early days people did so at their own peril.  Persecution was common.  So the church wanted people to be sure before they made the big step of being baptised and committing themselves to living Jesus’ way.  Then, at Easter, all the new converts would be baptised and accepted into the church. It was a joyful occasion and went on for ages.

Lent was the 40 days of instruction, prayer and fasting that potential Christians went through before they made the final decision.  And as time went by, close relatives and friends went through the time of prayer and fasting with them.  After a while, whole churches went through it with the new potential Christians.  Now, we just have a time of year that we do something pretty frivolous, like not eating red meat but changing to fish, for some reason that no one quite understands it seems.

Let’s put significance into Lent.

Prayer Studies: Each Wednesday night in March, @ 7.45pm in the Cafe. We’ll finish at 9.15. Coffee and Tea will be available when we arrive from 7.30pm.We are going to mark Lent with a time of studies on the subject of Prayer.  These will begin on the first Wednesday in March and continue for the next 3 weeks, until the end of March.

Why Prayer?  Well, prayer is the theme for this year in the URC.  Last year it was the Bible.  This year, we want everyone to think about prayer.  Why do we pray?  How do we pray?  When do we pray, and where?  Does it make a difference?  And what are we really doing?  Are we telling God something God doesn’t know?  Are we trying to get God to remember to care about people we love?  But God does that anyway!  Does God care more because we ask, less because we don’t?  Does God need to be reminded?  A God with gaps in memory doesn’t sound very likely to me.  So, what are we achieving? Something different to just asking God to do a bit better, something different to reminding God, or urging God to care.  God already does all of those, but we believe that Prayer is vital.

In these studies we explore why it’s vital, what we are missing out on if we don’t pray, how to get through those gaps when we feel like prayer is an old superstitious waste of time, or that God isn’t listening.

Prayer is us building a relationship with God. Throughout two thousand years, people have grappled with this, how it happens and what it means.  We will share some of those grapplings and hopefully gain some insights, and some help with prayer.

Bruce.