A prayer based round Emmanuel-God with us

23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). Matthew 1:23 quoting Isaiah 7:14

The word Immanuel- God with us comes readily to mind round Christmas time. That is the context that Matthew uses the quote from Isaiah in his gospel. But the idea of Immanuel- God with us (the immanence of God) is something that I find significant and important in the Christian faith, Not the God way out there, but the God who dwells with us and within us and is with us... or in my creative use of English what I call the "With-us-ness of God". the image I've attached to this posting is of a person walking in the wilderness almost a clique for journeying alone but at the same time for many has the echoes of the poem 'footprints' which talks of the with-us-ness of God. Here is a prayer of thanksgiving and confession from a advent service in which I have tried to capture this.
I do try and stick to a basic poetic-line structure but have put a couple of joiners in from thanksgiving to confession and also an affirmation of God's forgiveness.



Loving and righteous God


We come together to celebrate in song and word

Your great gift of love,

We remember at Christmas that you sent your son into the world

To become one of us and to save us

Immanuel –God with us



Creator of all that is

God with out beginning and end

In a mystery so deep

You became a child in the womb

You were born into our world

Not to riches and privilege and palace

But in a stable to ordinary folk

So wonderfully blessed

Immanuel- God with us



Jesus Christ, prince of peace

Child born at Bethlehem

We praise God for you

As a man

You showed us God’s love

You healed the sick

cared for the poor

Welcomed the outcast

Invited us to come to You

Immanuel –God with us



Jesus Christ, Saviour and friend

In your death on the cross

You made it possible for us to be forgiven

To know God and be adopted as beloved sons and daughters

In your being raised from the dead you gave us the new life

Immanuel- God with us



By your spirit you dwell with us still

In the midst of our everyday life there is the presence of the eternal

You light our way

Lead us into truth

You comfort us and strengthen us to live for you

Immanuel- God with us



God because of this great love and mercy


We turn to you and ask that you may forgive us for the things we have done wrong



Forgive us

we have thought it all revolved around us and our wants

We have not keep your word or followed your ways

We do not always love as you have loved us

We are not as gracious to all as you have been gracious to us

We have done what we should not do and left undone much of the good you call us to do.

Forgive us O Lord



Hear again the assurance from Emmanuel -God with us



That if we confess our sins God is faithful and just and forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness

You are forgiven



Fill us again with you spirit O God

Enable us to know the love that came at Christmas

Empower us to show the love that came at Christmas

To family and friend,

Stranger outcast and even foe

To bring your good news to all

Immanuel – God with us

A Prayer Of Thanks For All Life, Our Lives and New Life

Lord God almighty

You are the Lord of Life

we praise you for all you give



We praise you for creation

A world teaming with life and beauty

The lush dark greens of our native bush

The lighter hew of farmland and orchard

The melody and harmony of our Island of birds

The richness of marine life in the vaste deep blue beyond our shore

For the uniqueness and difference of your people

You are the Lord of Life

Help us to care for your world



We praise you for our lives

The newness in life that a baby brings

The sense of awe and adventure in toddlers exploring steps

A fresh eye on the world in the inquisitive questions of a child

The vigour and passion of youth

The Care and love of a parent’s embrace and nurture

The wisdom and maturity of older generations

You are the Lord of life

Help us to love one another



WE praise you for new and abundant life in Christ

We were lost and you sent your son to find us

We did not know you but in Jesus you made yourself known

We were burdened down in sin and in Christ you forgave us

Because of Jesus death and resurrection we have a clean slate and a new start

You fill us with your spirit to empower and guide, comfort and council

You lead us home to you through life to your father’s house

You are the lord of life

Help us to walk in the life you give

Christmas and Lights (They Go Together)

.I  Like this amazing image of a 'science geeks Advent wreath'. And let's face it Christmas and lights are synonymous with each other


There are some amazing displays of coloured lights, flashing and still that people decorate their houses with. For their pleasure and the pleasure of others. Over the past few years I’ve taken my children round to have a look at them in the various towns we’ve been in and its helped me recapture something of the wonder of the season with the infectious joy they seem to get from this.

There are the late night-lights of stores that stay open all hours to try and make Christmas shopping easier for us. Maybe they hope that after a certain time our will to resist that extra something for Auntie or the Children will break down.

Sadly there are the flashing lights of emergency vehicles responding to increased tension in some households or roadside carnage.

From the windows of homes there is the flash of Christmas tree lights that form a focus for family and friends. That are like a beacon to young ones filled with eager anticipation. They think they’ve guessed what is in the parcel that makes that wonderful rattle when they sneak in and give it a shake.

The Christmas tree lights often accompanied by the ghostly blue glow of the TV screens and more recently computer screens as people seek entertainment and amusement. The Christmas specials, adverts and maybe just ‘the same old same old’ another day where watching the box and surfing the web help keep the loneliness at bay or stop us from having to reflect to deeply.

Christmas time also is synonymous with candles. We see them on the Christmas cards we receive and send. At church they count us down to Christmas and light the special songs we cherish at this time of year. In fact at a recent Carols by Candlelight service I commented on the irony that the church know at Christmas was one of the only place you can say to people Light ‘em if you’ve got em’. Candles not cigarettes though.


Maybe Candles at Christmas are a chance for us to reflect, both on the light and the dark.

At the end of the first decade of the twenty first century where with street lighting, stadium lighting and the likes we think we have pushed back the darkness and the night. If we were to see a satellite photo of New Zealand and Australia at night, this would perhaps tell us a different story. It shows us that really we do have so much in common with our forebears who found themselves sitting by flickering candles steering off into the unknown. Maybe both in terms of knowledge and the human soul there is light and also so much darkness that we have yet to illuminate.

The Christmas story is also full of Light in the midst of darkness.

Mary bears a special child, the light of the world. Conceived and growing in the darkness of the womb. Able to hear the loud sounds about it. To know its mothers voice, the laugh of Joseph when he feels the child kick or the harsh order of roman soldiers in this occupied country demanding that people go to their native town to register.

Like this child we too glimpse as in a mirror darkly the existence of the spiritual all around us. The light that God shines to reveal himself to us; in creation, scripture and ultimately in coming as one of us.

The shepherds are sitting maybe by a fire in the cold hills around Bethlehem, keeping watch over their sheep. Always alert that a wolf or lion or two-legged creature may rob them of the animals from which they make their living. Maybe the banter round the fire would be rather familiar to us

… “ she’s a hard road finding the perfect woman, Boy’… “Lattee didn’t he play hooker for Otago”… “she’d have been faster if we had a horse”… “good on you mate”…


Then there is such blinding light. Like the sky was a curtain it rolls back and an angel appears. It was enough to frighten these harden shepherd they fall on the ground. The angel says fear not and give them Good News of a child born who is the saviour. A child not in a palace or in the home of the rich and powerful but in a shed lay in a feed trough. Suddenly the night was full of light. The angels arrayed as a mighty army spreading across the expanse of the night sky singing ‘Glory to God in the highest, and peace to all on earth in whom God find’s favour”. The shepherds abandon their sheep and go and see that what they have been told is true.

Here is the light of the world being proclaimed by creatures of light. Hope and peace with God for even the lowly shepherds and people like you and I.

We call them wise men, they gazed at the sky and looked to the stars to understand the world around them. They too see a light: Something new in the heavens. Something that causes them to leave their observatory, maybe change out of their white coats and put away their plastic pocket protectors, and go on a long journey. The star they understood signalled the birth of a special child. The long awaited ‘King of the Jews’. They journey through lands and the political intrigue of the paranoid dictator Herod to find this one. Lead and guided by a light. Finding a child who they worship and give and gifts of gold, frankeseince and myrrh. Strange to our twenty first century minds when a packet of treasures or a rattle maybe gifts for a baby. But they were gifts designed for a king.

The light of Christmas caused them to journey from the familiar to look for something new that would bring hope and peace for the human soul.

 John’s gospel.does not start by focusing on the shed out the back or the shepherds and angels wise men or kings but invites us to look at a bigger picture maybe like we would if we were standing at the beach at night staring out across the vastness of the pacific or up into the vastness of space. He looks beyond time and space to before the beginning and sees that in the darkness when there was only God That the word was with God and was God. That the word became a light that shone in the darkness. Like a candle it shed light, it showed us what God was like. That God loved us and was near us even in the darkness of our world or in the darkness in our own souls. The light revealed what had always been there beyond the gaze of man or the probe of the most technically advanced instrument. Beyond the physical universe there is a God who is spirit and who loves us. That in Christ this God became one of us, like a New Zealnad Christmas Summer Holiday, God pitched his tent in our neighbourhood and showed us the light of the world.

Caught In A Moment (Part 5): The Pale Blue Dot - An Advent Reflection

As the Voyager space probe left the solar system it turned and took one last photo. The earth is only 0.12 of a pixel. The photo prompted astronomer Carl Sagan to write,


Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives… on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam

Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves… Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

(‘The Pale blue’ dot 1994)

Christmas tells a different story. It looks beyond the physical to the spiritual and to God. St John does not start his story of Jesus life with the tale of the baby in the manger but like Sagan looks outward to cosmic beginnings. He says that we are not alone rather that in the darkness of the void of space and in the darkness of the worst of our human condition God has shone a light. Jesus is that light. In Jesus God became one of us. God is with us and for us as we live out our existence on this precious mote of dust. God offers us hope and help if we will turn to Jesus. The one who came at Christmas came to offer us abundant life…a fresh start and his abiding presence to bring hope, peace, love and joy.  Enabling us to live in a new way that is hope filled for this pale blue dot

Caught In A Moment (part 4): Advent reflection.. one solitary life

The Chinese army rolled into Tiananmen Square to brutally put down a pro-democracy rally. The world watched as one man stepped out in front of the tanks. He tries to persuade his comrades not to obey their orders. He is brushed aside and Tiananmen Square turns into a bloodbath. Despite his defeat the man inspires many to think that just maybe one person can make a difference. The coming Of Christ at Christmas also shows how one persob can make a difference and ibspires us to stand up and do the same.



The anonymous poem ‘One Solitary Life’ reflects on the impact Jesus life had.

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.

He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenters shop until He was thirty.

Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He

never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big

city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never

did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends

ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went

through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves.

While He was dying, His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He

had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave

through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centrepiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the

navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that

ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as

powerfully as has that ONE SOLITARY LIFE!

Like the man facing the tanks at Tiananmen Square it encourages us that we can make a difference for good. As a Christian I believe that Jesus presence with us gives all who believe the strength to do this.

Yet another prayer based on Psalm 107 (23ff mainly) with a nautical theme

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ


Praise you for your great mercy and grace

It surrounds us like the sea surrounds our Island home



We were not even looking for you we had turned away

Yet you sent your son Jesus to show us your love

To teach us your ways and to save us



We were lost in darkness, stumbling along blind

In Jesus you shone your great light in our life

Showed us the way and lead us home to you


Our sins held us fast and dragged us down

In Christ’s death and resurrection you give us forgiveness

By grace the shackles fall away and we are free


We find our selves tossed on the waves and battered by the winds

You speak your presence and peace into our lives

Your spirit is our comfort and our guide


We stand by feeling helpless as the storm rages round us

Yet you are with us and empowered us to witness to you

You enable us to reach out and pluck people to safety in you


We hug the shore seeking only safe haven, reluctant to venture too far

You go before us out into the deep and invite us to follow

AS we do we will see your wondrous works O Lord.


We cannot see over the horizon through the mist of time

Yet you O Lord are working your plans for Good

We have confidence of eternal life with you


Lord God we have been washed in your goodness

Wave after wave of mercy and love has crashed on our shore

Forgive us for our sins as we turn again to you


We have not loved you as we should

We have gone our own self-centered way

Help us to see its not all about us


We have not loved as you love

The tide is way out on our mercy and grace

Forgive and enable us to forgive


We have abused and misused your creation

Bent it to serve our greed, our power our hate

Help us to be good stewards O Lord


Thank you that as we have confessed our sin

You have been faithful and just and forgive us

Like a pristine beach in the dawn that the tide has swept clean of footprints We have been made new


Fill our sails, our lives, afresh with your spirit O God

That we may venture forth to serve you to follow you

Giving all glory to You O God, Father , Son and Holy Spirit

The Context Of Time: A Brief Refelction on Luke 3:1-6

‘What time in the world is it?’ is the provocative refrain that echoes throughout the U2 360 degrees stage show. I have for the past week been wondering about it: A time for action, a time for compassion, a time for peace? Is it a reflection of the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 forever a part of pop culture because of Pete, Paul and Mary and the electronic Byrd’s version of the same song? It was interesting that this idea of time came up in my bible reading this week.


I was preparing a bible study on Luke 3 for Studentsoul yesterday and was rather taken by Darryl Bock’s reflection on Luke3:1-6. He commented that verses 1-3 puts John the Baptist and the beginning of Jesus ministry into its political historical setting. Starting with Tiberius Augustus and working through the political and religious structure of Palestine at the time. Then verse 4-6 a quote from Isaiah, puts John the Baptist in the context of biblical promise. It got me wondering about the fact we find ourselves in two interwoven strands of history, world history and salvation history. My bible reading for this morning (in my 'One Year Bible'   bible) was from Daniel 9. It starts gain by outing Daniel in the historical context of Darius the son of Xerxes being the ruler over Babylon. But Daniel is also aware that it is a different time in history as well. He looks at the prophet Jeremiah and sees that the 70 years of Exile that God had given Israel was coming to an end and he turns to god and prays that amidst all the moving and rising of empires and kingdoms that God would keep his gracious promise to his people and bring them back to Jerusalem.

In the midst of the whirl and swirl of change, the rise and fall of empires and systems, ideologies holding away and falling away even times like when change itself has changed as Leonard Sweet says that sociologists use terms now like churn and blur and things don’t just change they morph it is good to know that amidst that seeming chaos that God is sovereign and his salvation history is being worked out as well.

I guess the two terms for time in the Greek language of the New Testament bring out these two senses of time. Kronos meaning physical time and Kairos meaning season or as it has been adopted in some Christian quarters as meaning God’s time. While the fractal clock that accompanies this post would show time as an ever repeating pattern Christians believe we live in the reality of both times as they enviably flow to a God ordained conclusion.