Prayer Calendar
Message from Bishop David, January 2010:
As we prepare to give thanks and wish Godspeed to Bishop Anthony on his retirement and then to welcome his successor, prayer needs to be at the very heart of our diocesan life. It is how we root this changeable life in the unchanging nature of God, and find the grace and guidance to direct it in His ways. So I am delighted to commend this Prayer Calendar to you. I use it myself, and hope many of you will do so too.
If prayer and life in Christ is the wellspring that feeds our faith, the focus of that prayer and of our Christian concern is most often people. This calendar reads the roll, as it were, of our brothers and sisters in Christ, both in our own diocese and more widely, helps us to remember them, and to pray for them with some knowledge. By doing this it builds us up as the body of Christ and helps us to be his people better.
Prayer, people—and plans. In the notes each parish puts forward, they tell us of their joys and sorrows, their plans and their problems. Many of these will, now, be included in their Mission Action Plans which are becoming a key part of our hope to move on in God’s mission together. It goes without saying that such plans and the people who are seeking to forward them need themselves to be upheld in prayer, and this Calendar enables us to widen that prayer in a very winsome way.
So, “Be joyful always; pray continually; and give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess. 5.16-18)