One step beyond!!

Seems like a good way of starting a new year. I guess things over Christmas have been pretty safe as far as worshipping is concerned, as the music and the words we use in services are usually well known and well used. No matter how challenging an approach is made (St Andrew’s, for example, sang some modern carols on New Year’s Day, with modern themes, to some familiar tunes), we are still in the cosy state of gathering round the manger thinking about a baby. However, the church’s year pretty quickly takes us on to the Baptism and mission of Jesus. So if we think ending one year on familiar territory leads naturally on to an extension of that in the new year, we had better reconsider. 
 

When we gather in church for worship, we come to meet God afresh; when we leave, we are meant to grab our Father’s hand, as our children do with ours, and move on to face the world together. Life can be a bit like crossing a busy road, so a safe route across, guided by parent, is best for us. But it’s one step beyond the usual, the comfortable , the unchallenging. This is a naughty world, with so much to be concerned about, at home and abroad. With our hand in His, we take a new dimension into everything we’re concerned with. How can we affect it all, though? 
 

Do you think this is madness! No, it’s not daft to take at face value the power we’re promised, it was intended for the very people and situations we’re thinking about. And if our worship goes with us out of the church door, becoming our routine and driving force, things get changed as God responds, not always as we plan or even understand. People, events, minds get affected and brought under God’s will as we put them in our prayers. 
 

What to pray? Invite God to promote people in situations where they can affect events (they don’t all have to be Christians- look at Cyrus the Great  as a Biblical example, or those in history who with little or different faith were able to knock Christians’ heads together and get God’s will done unknowingly, as it were).  In time we may also feel the call to be active in some way, like the Barnabus helpers at St Andrews. But it all begins by taking one step beyond the usual, and finding Jesus matching us stride for stride.