Thank you for gathering here at the start of what is now our annual season of prayer for the fuller coming of God’s Kingdom, “Thy Kingdom Come”; an initiative started by our Archbishop but now taken up by churches of all denominations and across the world, in which Christians of all backgrounds unite in prayer, in our one Lord Jesus Christ, and in the prayer that he himself taught us: “thy kingdom come”. It’s a prayer we pray so often, weekly, perhaps daily. It could be just wallpaper, but we only need to listen to the news, to look with open eyes at the world around us, and surely our hearts must ache for that prayer to come true in our own time, for God’s will to be done and his kingdom of peace and justice, forgiveness and flourishing to flower amongst us. Some people see the darkness in the world and cannot see beyond it. For them life is essentially tragic: at bottom it has no deep meaning or purpose, in the end it has no real hope. No wonder so many seem to live lives that are little more than opportunistic, and no wonder that so many sadly find life what C S Lewis called a matter of quiet despair. We as the followers of Jesus Christ dare to say different. We look at the beauty of the world around us, the adventure of scientific discovery, the wonder of a new birth, the delight of the arts, the long story of human habitation as shown in a place like this, and the depths of prayer that it also leads us into – and we say, “There must be more”, “There is more”: the darkness is really there, but we declare that it will never overcome the light. Jesus came as a light shining in the darkness. That is why we have hope. In his death and resurrection we see darkness and yes death itself give way to light and life. So we hallow, we treasure his Name; we pray that his Kingdom will come, that his will will be done first in our own lives and then in the lives of all. And we turn to him with chastened hope to find forgiveness when we like every one among us falls short of such a calling, and begin again. So I invite you to pray with Archbishop Justin, with me, with countless thousands of Christians across the world that God’s kingdom will come ever more fully amongst us, in this church and this village, down its streets and in its shops and schools, in our places of work and places of leisure, in our hospitals and in our homes. His kingdom come. His will be done. And we dare to do it too with hope and joy because that kingdom will come, on earth as it is in heaven. And the kingdom, the power and the glory will be to the One who has shown to the uttermost that he beyond all human capacity can and will only ever use that authority for the sake of others and not himself. That is the kingdom I yearn to see come in all its fulness, even now in my own lifetime, a kingdom that will meet every human being in their need, and allow every human life to flourish. How that can come about when we are so often so far from him I can hardly begin to imagine; but I know where it must begin, with the light of Christ, and I know that unless I let that light shine and in through my own life I have let the darkness gain ground. So let the light shine, let his kingdom come, and let his will be done, here on earth as it is heaven, beginning today. Amen. David Thomson | May 14, 2018 at 6:15 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/poSLL-3zu |