MORE than 70 people tucked into a tasty harvest supper at the Parish Centre on Saturday, October 1, with foods representing different countries of the world.

The ‘bring and share’ event offered a delicious spread, with walls and tables festooned with flags. The lively event, with seasonal party games and singing, went down a treat!

Prayer for the month

A prayer for refugees

God of compassion whose own son experienced life as a refugee we remember those fleeing from danger, hungry and afraid, with nowhere to call home.

God, we ask for them warmth, security, food and peace.

God of hope, we thank you for those who are working to bring relief and comfort to those displaced, showing glimpses of grace in the darkness of despair.

God, give them strength.

God of justice, guide the nations and the leaders of the world towards peace, stir hearts to be generous and compassionate.

God, help us to play our part in bringing about the change that we want to see.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord

Amen

(Diocese of Exeter)

Prayer of the Month

O God, forasmuch as without you

we are not able to please you;

mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit

may in all things direct and rule our hearts;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

The collect for the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity is a favourite prayer of mine, and I sometimes use it at the start of meetings when asking for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The prayer is very old, and is included in the Gelasian Sacramentary, the second oldest western book of Christian liturgy compiled in Paris around 750AD. The prayer reminds us that the purpose of life is to please God, and it emphasises the Trinitarian nature of God, in that without God the Holy Spirit we are unable to please God the Father.

The prayer brings back memories of an educational charity in the East End of London where I served as a trustee in the 1990s. John Hall, now Dean of Westminster and then Chief Education Officer of the Church of England and a fellow trustee, would often use the prayer at the start of our meetings.

John Rea

Prayer of the Month

Psalm 139 – A Devotional Prayer

Psalm 139 describes a person who is thinking about their relationship to God. It is one of my favorite devotional prayers. It speaks about God searching my heart and knowing my thoughts (God knows me better than I know myself) and about aligning my heart and mind to that of God’s. I hope you will find these words an encouragement to you also:

“Lord, you have searched me out and know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – when I awake, I am still with you.”

Christopher Hardwick