LITURGY
Second Sunday of Lent
WORD OF GOD
God said to Abraham,
‘Take Isaac your son...
and offer him as a burnt offering,
on a mountain I will point out to you.’
(Genesis 22:1-2)
WORD FOR TODAY
What does our faith mean to us? Is it a set of facts to believe or an
adventure to live a life that seems to defy all odds? God brought
Abraham to the brink of trust in order to reward him. What is God asking
of us this Lent and are we ready to take the risk?
WORDS FOR WORSHIP
Lord Jesus, you take away the cloud that shadows our view of your
greatness:
Lord, have mercy:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ Jesus, you offer us the life of faith that teaches us to trust in
your saving love:
Christ, have mercy:
Christ, have mercy.
Lord Jesus, you call us to repentance and change of heart:
Lord, have mercy:
Lord, have mercy.
May almighty God pierce the cloud of our unbelief, forgive us our sins
and bring us to the joys of everlasting life.
Amen.
FAITH IN FOCUS: HOW FAR WILL YOU GO?
Imagine you felt you were called by God to do something that everyone
else thought was stupid. Imagine you received God’s call to up sticks
and move from your home, travelling to the middle of nowhere just to
show how much faith you had. And imagine, when you got there, that God
asked you to prove your faith by sacrificing one of your children.
Unbelievable? Yes, certainly in today’s climate. But that’s what
happened to Abraham. Mercifully, God prevented him from killing Isaac
once he realised that Abraham would do whatever was asked of him. This
is one of the reasons we refer to Abraham as our ‘Father in Faith’.
But before we think we have got away with it, we need to remember that
during this Lent God will ask something of us that will give us an
opportunity to show our faith. We won’t be asked to sacrifice our
children but we will have six weeks in which we can show that we are
prepared to grow in the faith we profess. How far will we go?
For Lent is not simply a time for giving up things or doing something
extra. It’s a journey of renewal. There is no doubt that during Lent God
will use the ordinary circumstances of our lives in order to reveal the
depth of his concern for us and to seek our loving response. This will
be different for each one of us. It might be the reminder that we really
ought to devote more time to our prayer. It might be the nagging
realisation that there is unfinished business with family members that
we ought to set right once and for all. It might be that during Lent we
will come to see the selfishness that has caught hold of us and take
steps to remedy it.
We each know that we are capable of being much better people than we
allow ourselves to be. God has given us a greatness that we are only too
prepared to hide. And Lent is our annual season for renewing ourselves
in spirit, for controlling those aspects of our character that make us
less than loveable, and realising that although we live in this passing
world there is another which will never end.
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