If it gets much warmer I’ll melt.

It’s Tuesday and the mercury is heading towards 40 once more.  The coolest place right now would be in one of our churches except that I just don’t fancy the walk to get in.  Instead, I have closed my heavy curtain and retreated back into my study.  Dramatic change is disruptive.  Not only is my body uncomfortable with the heat, my brain is also.  I feel about as sharp as a beachball.

We have experienced a traumatic couple of years; pandemic, war in Europe, a cost of living crisis to name but a few.  Now, as the mercury climbs, we have a very sharp reminder of the impact on our daily lives of our rapidly warming planet (and the impact on our planet of our daily lives).  How quickly the glow of the Jubilee has melted.  Faced with this apparently unending litany of bad news, we feel overwhelmed.  Little wonder that stress, anxiety and related issues are on an ever upward trajectory.

This Sunday’s gospel brings us The Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11: 1-4).  Recognising our needs, not our desires, we are encouraged to pray ‘your kingdom come’, as Christians have been doing for 2000 years.  Just before his execution, Jesus told Pilate God’s kingdom is not of this world (John 18: 36); it will not be ushered in by armed force, nor will it have territorial boundaries and a seat at the UN.  God’s kingdom comes in the hearts and minds of God’s people; it can be everywhere – or nowhere.  That is where we come in.

It will rain again.  When it does we will watch raindrops dancing on the drive, into puddles, across windows.  Taken together these drops will gather into ponds and lakes; rivers and oceans; parched ground will be green again.  Just as today’s problems are the sum of many small parts, so too will be their solutions; but that will need God’s kingdom to come.  Prayer is not an easy answer.  To ask, your kingdom come, and mean it, is to ask that God will make changes – and begin with us.  We may never see the fruits of our prayers, or of the many, perhaps small and subtle, changes we make but fruits there will be.

Faced with seemingly insurmountable problems, perhaps we are not as helpless as we first appear.  God’s kingdom will come, let us pray for his coming in us.

Rev’d Philip Payne

The Notice Sheet for 24 July 22 can be found here