EDINBURGH NORTHWEST KIRK
JUNE PRAYER DIARY
I lift up my eyes to the mountains
- where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
maker of heaven and earth.
(Psalm 121 : 1 - 2)
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Prayers for each day
1 June Agencies trying to help in the (DRC) Democratic Republic of Congo as the country deals with war and an Ebola
outbreak
2 June the ministry of the Church in DRC
3 June peace in the continuing conflict in the middle east
4 June the new Elders of Edinburgh North West Kirk
5 June the ministry of the Visiting Team, the elderly and housebound
6 June the ministry to our young people attending church on Sundays
7 June Joint communion service at Pennywell
8 June Hospital Chaplains in Edinburgh
9 June Julia and her family
10 June the National Prayer Breakfast for Scotland, Prestonfield House. Keynote Speaker: Kate Forbes
11 June CrossReach: the Elms, Edinburgh, helping elderly residents with a diagnosis of dementia
12 June CrossReach: CrossReach Board, overseeing this vital ministry
13 June the King, Queen and Royal Family
14 June our services at Cramond and Pennywell
15 June Edinburgh Presbytery meeting tomorrow
16 June Talk at Pennywell Kirk Hall (2.30 pm) about Tabeetha School near Tel Aviv
17 June Emma McMillan in her studies
18 June for the new Moderator, Rt Rev Gordon Kennedy
19 June for Jessie Fubara-Manuel
20 June Pennywell Summer Fair
21 June our services at Cramond and Pennywell
22 June our new Session Clerk, Ruth Minnican
23 June Edinburgh Street Pastors
24 June Open Doors ministry: pray for persecuted Christians in Sudan
25 June the Kirk Session meeting this evening
26 June for members of our community dealing with mental illness
27 June God’s blessing on the ministry of Edinburgh Northwest Kirk
28 June our services at Cramond and Pennywell
29 June the First Minister, Government and new MSPs
30 June for Julia and family time over the summer holidays
Reflection
Commentary on the Day of Pentecost : Acts 2 by Rebecca Dean, Lecturer in New Testament, Ripon College, Oxfordshire
The chapter ends with the first of the so-called “summary statements” of Acts: a description of a newly formed and growing community, devoted to learning, to prayer, and to breaking bread together (verse 42). Community members respond to the needs of those around them by selling their possessions and using the proceeds for good (verse 45). Perhaps this, too, forms part of the answer to the question of what the outpouring of the Spirit might mean: not a quest for further spiritual “highs,” but a turn to the arguably more important tasks of fellowship and justice.
Indeed, this combination of divine discernment and attentiveness to justice is precisely the pattern offered to us within earlier works such as the book of Joel: Human calamities and divine promises form part of a single picture, and the task of the prophet is to observe and interpret both.
As Matthew Skinner writes... “Peter’s brand of prophecy is truth telling. It is interpretation: naming the ways and places where God’s salvation is realised, where God’s presence and influence can be encountered. It is insisting that humanity’s existence and the life of God do not exist in separate planes; rather, they are intertwined, each a part of the other.”
Preachers and commentators have often noted the risk of a domestication and subsequent loss of impact of the account of the first Christian Pentecost, yet its disconnection from the wider picture of faith and discipleship—in the book of Acts and in the lives of all Christian communities—is equally problematic.
It may or may not be the case that we should expect to see the tongues of fire and hear the sound of rushing wind for ourselves, but the Acts narrative offers us more than a glimpse of these marvels: It weaves them into the lives of ordinary people, who are called to notice the signs of the times—both divine and other—and locate them in the wider story of God’s purposes. As God’s people, we are invited to respond, not through the pursuit of “mountaintop” or “upper room” experiences, but by engaging in community-building, hospitality, and welcome, and by looking out for the Holy Spirit at work in unexpected places.
(Matthew L. Skinner, Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel: Encountering the Divine in the Book of Acts (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2015), 12.)
(https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/day-of-pentecost/commentary-on-acts-21-21-19)
If you have a prayer request or a favourite prayer which you would care to share in a future Prayer Diary, please e-mail office@cramondkirk.org.uk