PRAYER CHAPEL; PRAYER FOR TODDLERS, THEIR PARENTS AND CARERS

'Sovereign Lord, we thank you for the relationships between parents and their toddlers.
Lord Jesus, be with them and their carers at all times.
Bless these little ones as they learn to share and play together.'

Prayer at this quiet Chapel; Pray for your children, or the children you know.
Pray for their parents as they try to meet the demands of good parenting.
Pray for children as they face the pressures of life in this world.
Pray that God will shower blessings on all our young ones, and gather under His Cloak all those who have lost their lives prematurely.
May the God of Love and Protection keep His Divine Hand over our youth.

PRAYER CHAPEL; PRAYER FOR CHURCH MINISTRIES

'Almighty God we give you thanks and praise for all those who work in the fields of the harvest of the Lord; for all engaged in all forms of church ministries.
  We thank you for those who meet with those mourning the loss of a loved one.
  We pray for those who enable the lonely to build new friendships.
  We ask strength and blessing for those who support others on their journey and we pray that Your Love of each person in our community may be shown also through us; not only in word BUT ALSO IN ACTION.
God Almighty, please guide and lead us all in ministry.'

Dear prayer at this quiet Chapel, pray for your family, colleagues, friends.
Pray for all those hurt by warfare and violence.
Pray for refugees.
Pray, too, for the continuance of church ministries, and that priests of God may be faithful and devout in their service of the Almighty.

PRAYER CHAPEL; LET US KNEEL BEFORE GOD OUR FATHER

'God our Father, we remember the journey of the Wise Men, their gifts for the new King and their kneeling before Christ in worship.
  May we too worship the Light of the World with all that we have to offer; our time, talents and God given gifts and skills.
  May our lives give glory to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit now and always. Amen.'

Dear prayer at this quiet Chapel;
  Pray today for those who live in your road for all the blessings they need in their lives.
  Pray too for those who have not had the opportunity in their lifetime to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.
  Pray they will receive the chance to ask Him to be part of their lives; this wonderful Friend and Companion on our road of life.

PRAYER CHAPEL; PRAYER FOR CHAPLAINS

'May the Name of the Lord be praised on the streets

of our community through the work of the Chaplains

as they go out in Christ's Name to speak with and

help those in need. May they be as Christ to all

they come into contact with, showing Christ's

love and care for them. Amen.'

PRAYER CHAPEL; WE LIFT FAMILIES MOURNING THE LOSS OF A LOVED ONE

'Compassionate God, we lift to You the many families who this year have celebrated the remembrance of Your Birth yet mourning the loss of a loved one.
Draw close to them and bring Your Peace into their lives.'

Dear prayer at this quiet Chapel, spend some time today praying for those who have asked for our prayers, and for those you know are especially in need of devout prayer.

PRAYER CHAPEL; FATHER GOD, WE REJOICE IN THIS YEAR

 

'Father God, as we rejoice in this Year, with new opportunities and new challenges each day; may our trust in You our Heavenly Father continue to increase.
  Direct our steps according to Your Will and Purpose and guide us as Your ambassadors to increase Your Kingdom.
Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to Your Name be the glory, because of Your Love and Faithfulness.'

Dear prayer in this quiet Chapel, take time today to just rest in God's Presence and listen to what He might want to share with  you.

PRAYER CHAPEL; SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD

'But seek first His Kingdom and

His righteousness, and all these things

will be given to you as well.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,

for tomorrow will worry about itself.'

                                                                                Jesus Christ

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=seek+ye+first+the+kingdom+of+god&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=C71D846C0F834C149AE8C71D846C0F834C149AE8

With thanks to bing.com and youtube

God Made Us Stewards of the Earth

God made us stewards of the earth
  'God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
  Then God said, "Let us make man in Our Image, according to Our likeness; and let them have stewardship over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 
  God created man in in His Own Image, in the Image of God He created them; male and female He created them . . ." Genesis 1; 25 - 27

Flawless inheritance  
  When God created the earth and all in it, He gave this flawless inheritance to humanity - God-Imaged in male and female form.
  Stewardship denotes the activity or job of protecting and being responsible for something.
  It would appear that God had mature protection of planetary resources in mind.
  When we look around our inheritance today, we see animals behaving in stewardship roles.
 - Picking up the refuse carelessly left by the planet's rulers [1]
 - Saving human babies discarded in the trash [2]
Oceans are overfished and badly affected [3] 
Trawling nets kill many marine animals for no reason whatever.
- Pollution threatens the health of many. WHO report speaks about air pollution reportedly killing '7 million people a year' Alleged News [4]
- Radioactive waste discarded in oceans is changing our ecosystem. In one instance, Wall St Journal claimed that plutonium levels are 1,000 times above normal on the seafloor 50 miles from San Francisco where 50,000 containers of radioactive waste lay at the bottom of the seafloor after steel barrels of nuclear material were disposed of a few decades ago, Alleged News. They also claimed this is globally significant and is impacting the ecosystem, Alleged News [5] 

Animals treated with lack of respect
Animals are treated with lack of respect for life. 
  Not only eaten in contravention of God's direct Commandment to Moses 'Thou shalt not kill', they are tortured, beaten, burned alive, ripped apart in the process of being killed and used as human food.     One such example is the torture and consumption of dogs and cats in Korea, Alleged News [6]
  Cancer risks in humans have reportedly increased due to red meat from animals [7]
 Bees, a vital link in the food cycle of the planet, are in danger of becoming extinct due to various factors [8]
 Numerous instances of animals treated in abusive ways, experimented on, killed are reported in the news.

Outer Space
As humanity has extended research into space, debris and trash have been left in the until then pristinely kept universe.
  More than 500,000 pieces of debris or 'space junk' are tracked as they orbit the earth. They all travel at speeds up to 17,500 mph with potential danger to all space vehicles [9]

Moral Implications
When God created humanity as stewards, He did not intent us to be overlords but friends with responsibility for the greater good of the beauty He made.
  The Garden of Eden was beautifully made and abounded with life; humanity were created specifically to take care of it.
  How God must look down and cry as He sees what we have made of it.
  People lying dying in streets outside shuttered housing; freezing to death in winter near shelter they may not use due to manmade laws.
  Babies being murdered before birth so as not to be an inconvenience.
  Animals being tortured and murdered, humanity uncaring at their cries.
  The reality of the gruesome deaths animals suffer in excrutiating pain in order to be hygienically presented in attractive shelving for sale as food.

 Abattoir killing done away from the daily gaze of the public. I visited an abattoir when I was seventeen years old. 
  Animals hung upside down, their one leg staked through a hook, kicking as they were shot to the head; fellow cattle being herded to their death lowed in distress. 
  Mother animals were discarded in a special room, their unborn babies tumbling out of their uterus as the mother gave premature birth during their murder. 
  All were left on the ground, the tiny premature calves gasping to death within the membranes next to their dead mothers. I don't need to wonder what hell looks like; I have been there.

Our responsibilities as stewards
As stewards, each one of us has a moral responsibility.
  We will stand before Almighty God at our own personal judgement. We will be required to account for our actions during our lifetimes by One Who is understanding; but, before His immense Holiness and Perfection, surely every failing to those around us - including the innocents who protected the Son of God at birth by being the only ones in the planet to offer Him shelter - will shame us before Our Lord and Master.
  We have a moral responsibility to be noble, worthy and compassionate to others and to our planet.
  It is not logical or according to reason to wish to find alien life in other planets. What can we offer?
  There is life. That is assured. Those who have gone before us are living in the cosmos according to the preparations made by God.
  Angels direct the universe and assist us.
  Hoping to find alien life on other planets when our own planet is slowly being poisoned to death by neglect is not ethical or morally
responsible.
  Let us clean up our home, fulfil our responsibilities as stewards, cease the murder of animals and lift our head up high once more.

[1] Elephant caught on CCRB cleaning up the trash 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NswSP0Hrh9Q 
[2] http://www.lifewithdogs.tv/2015/05/stray-dog-saves-baby-thrown-in-trash-from-being-eaten-alive/ 
[3] http://news.mongabay.com/2013/10/the-dead-ocean-eyewitness-says-overfishing-has-emptied-the-pacific/ 
[4] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/25/air-pollution-kills-7m-people-a-year 
[5] http://www.cbrneportal.com/the-disposal-of-nuclear-waste-into-the-worlds-oceans/
[6] http://lumierecharity.blogspot.ie/2015/07/torture-and-consumption-of-dogs-and.html 
[7] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/01/02/red-meat-cancer-immune/#.VbB34_lViko
[8] http://www.globalresearch.ca/death-and-extinction-of-the-bees/5375684 
[9] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html

With thanks to Youtube, lifewithdogs.tv, mongabay.com, theguardian.com, cbrneportal.com, blogs.discovermagazine.com, globalresearch.ca, nasa.gove

JUDAS - WHO WAS HE REALLY?

EACH OF US HAS A CHARACTER FLAW. JUDAS' WAS MONEY. Other flaws can be cruelty; unbridled sensuality at the cost of others; arrogance and the rejection of the Supremacy of God to name but a few.
  The good news is that with God's Grace and Jesus' offer of salvation, we can work to effectively overcome the personal flaws we inherited through the Fall of humanity.
  We can then rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of our broken nature to a transcendent new and godly character.

Betrayal
Judas eventually betrayed Jesus into the hands of His enemy satan.
Judas did not have full knowledge of the consequences of what he was doing.
  However, his personal flaw of character, weakness in the face of the fascination that the power of money can exert, blinded Judas to the goodness of Jesus and the possible consequences of his own actions.
  Thus Judas sold his God-given offer of one of the twelve thrones of Israel in eternity, for the bribe of thirty pieces of earthly beaten metal.

Repentance
Later, sick with heart at the results of his action he was unable - although he desperately tried - to reverse the inexorable sequence of events he had ignited.
  Judas was driven temporarily out of his wits with remorse and punished himself by dreadful hanging.
  Surely this man, bereft of his eternal throne and the close friendship he had enjoyed with Jesus the Son of God was now the most sorrowful of men.
  And surely, too, he threw himself headlong from the tree into the limitless ocean of the mercy of God.

Name, blame and shame
It is easy to look at Judas and name, blame and shame him as betrayer.
  Many of us too, struggle with the lure of wealth.
We are tempted to make hasty decisions without due and prudent thought of the consequences.
  Often we, too, do not fully treasure our relationships and friendships, and the impact our actions have on the lives of others.

  Many a time we have been sick with heart at the results of actions we have taken, and would give anything to turn the clock back.
The good news is, all is not in vain.
  Through the Goodness of God and the mercy of His grace, we come out of each experience with greater wisdom and knowledge of how to behave with greater maturity in the future.
  It is always such a temptation to name, blame and shame another caught out in a personal falling short of perfection.
They are the scapegoat. They are the one to be ostracised.
  They will surely be harshly judged by God.

Template of penitence
The truth is, that there is a little [gasp, horror! dare I say it?] of Judas in all of us.
  Perhaps that is why he was so vilified in the Gospels.
He was overcome by the need for quick and easy money.
  Many of us have struggled with that temptation.
He was fed up with being second in a relationship, and jealous of Jesus' supremacy with the crowds.
  He was jealous of another. Often, so are we.

The full picture of Judas is that, despite his weakness and his wrongdoing, he was humble.
  He went to those who had bribed him, and begged them to take back the bribe.
  He did all he could to offer restitution, even throwing the money to them and refusing to keep it.
  When he could not reverse the awful fate of Jesus, his underlying love and friendship of Jesus - no longer blighted by jealousy and the need for money - came to the fore.
  Overcome by grief and horror at the torture which was being meted out to that best and kindest of men, Jesus, he condemned himself.
And carried out self-execution.

Judgement
At his judgement, a great and merciful God would look not only at the moments of wrongdoing.
  He would look at a son of a mother and father; a brother who had played with siblings.
  He would see the studious young man who had started out on a career with high hopes and zealous nature.
God would sift the moments of love for others; the many small human kindnesses; the moments of indecision and despair; the loneliness of discipleship.
  He would look over the moments of witness when Judas followed the Christ - a call others refused.
  God would see the people Judas, through his discipleship, had brought to Him.

Tears of remorse
And this tearful, repentant and remorseful man surely would be treated gently by the Greatest Father of all time.
  Tears of remorse can wash a soul clean; a moment of repentance can save a sinner.
Judas was, too, caught up in the darkness engendered by the archenemy of Jesus.

Resurrection?
Judas - died from a tree, and waiting when Jesus came to call the dead from the graves.
  When the souls of those who had gone before were freed from the sentence of banishment from God - which occurred in the Fall - they went joyfully into the city of Jerusalem to greet their nearest and dearest.
  Is it too much to wonder whether that bruised and repentant disciple was humbly called forth as well by the Friend Who forgives seventy times seven ... ?

Image by Rev Catherine

JESUS' LIFE WORK

In a nutshell, Jesus' life work was to heal the rift 

in relationship between God and humanity, 

in a way that the set social and religious mores

 of the time were not designed to encompass.

So Jesus set about instituting a new design.

Image by Rev Catherine

Be At Peace

GOD KNOWS EVERY HEART.

ASK YOURSELF ...

WHAT CAN BE MORE REAL THAN THE CALL OF GOD?

IF IT IS A TRUE CALL,

YOU MUST ANSWER IT

SAY ...

I WILL TRUST IN GOD