PRAYER

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Lord God, thank You for Your New Covenant in which Your law of love is written on human hearts so that all will know You from the very least to the very greatest.

Thank You for Jesus, Your seal of the Covenant: our Teacher, our Companion, our Saviour and our Bridge to Heaven.

Thank You for the Spirit, Your channel of the Covenant: Our Comforter, our Guide, our Disturber and Your Power within us.

A new Covenant? A new normal? Is it happening, now Lord God? Is this it? Surely only instinctive Love can have prompted this communal outpouring of kindness and caring, this new-found self-sacrifice and self-discipline, these acts of courage and compassion, by individuals and families, by keyworkers and those in lockdown?

We praise You for this new awareness of who is our neighbour who are our everyday heroes, and who in our society still suffers inequality or injustice.

We thank You for the language of lament for there have been many heart-breaking losses. But although in these times, we cannot give a loved one the send-off we might want to, their journey into Your heart O God remains assured.

A new Covenant? A new normal? Lord, empower us to create the new normal that lives out the truth of the new Covenant. Enable us to build relationships and communities – locally, nationally and internationally with Your Law at the heart of them. Let us make Your name, spoken and unspoken, a verb, a ‘doing-Word’. Love in action.

Let us be Christ to one another, ready to share our loaves and fish or waiting, with towel and water, to kneel at the feet of friend or stranger.

A new normal? Let this not be a cliché but a Kairos! Amen.

(Jeremiah 31: 31-34 ‘A New Covenant’)

This article appears in the September 2020 Issue of Life and Work

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