Pray? Did I hear you say?

When did you last hear that said? We were reminded of that this morning. In these days of quarantine what do you do?

The Lord Jesus told his disciples that they too should go into quarantine. Those of you who have no interest in tax or law please skip the next paragraph. Those of you who do, please correct me. It does have a remote significance to the point I have to make, but skipping it will not harm.

Coco came across some notes of a discussion on charitable status which contained the following reference; for the purposes of obtaining tax relief, you would expect that a religious group would not find any difficulty in obtaining such a status. However the RC Carmelite Priory which housed a contemplative order, devoted to prayer, and therefore quarantined was found not to be charitable as the public benefit provided was not susceptible to legal proof, which the court required in order to act. Lord Greene did not argue that there was no public benefit but that the benefit could not be proven and without proof of benefit you cannot move from the position of being non-beneficial. That there is public benefit in private prayer is, as we shall see, without contradiction.

In the sermon on the mount, which you will know starts with the beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, etc the Lord goes on to say, just after the section dealing with charitable giving and good works where he says: Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing: when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room [quarantine yourself], and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place (Matthew’s gospel chapter 6).

When we are going to pray we are enjoined by the Lord to hide away in our own room away from others. It is there that we make our requests known to our heavenly Father, who hears us. Are we in our enforced quarantine making use of this opportunity to hide away and make our requests known? In times past our leaders have exhorted us in times of national distress to pray. We live in a day of international distress, do we hear that call today, or have some of our leaders lost their way?

The Lord went on in the sermon to say: your Father who sees in secret will himself reward you openly. Openly, in plain sight, in public that the benefit of your praying might be felt by all. Paul wrote to the Philippians (my paraphrase): For I know that through your prayer taken on by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance.

Coco wrote this before the Queen’s speech this evening. It was good to hear her words about people who pray. Coco asked, should he change any of this? Perhaps, perhaps not….you may judge.

But we, let us pray and seek the Lord that he may have mercy upon us and upon our land. It will be costly. If you will approach him you must have clean hands and a pure heart, and who of us can say to that I do? But he in Jesus Christ will provide that so we may come to him in Jesus’s name and he shall hear us.