Lent Inspirations 5 - Sunday 5th April - Palm Sunday

Many of the bloggers and facebookser and tweeters that I follow are churcher-goers of one style or another - Quakers, Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans (that's me), United Reformed Church, Baptist, Methodist - have I left anyone out? Almost certainly, because there are as many forms of Christian Church as there are types of cuisine, genres of music or film, styles in art.

Leaving aside whether these are 'terrible and tragic' divisions, or reflections of different cultures and historical events, all of us seem to be honing in on Prayer at this time.

I've got an old copy of the Pocket Oxford Book of Prayer besde the bed; I flick through the section headings, choose and turn to a page, and see what catches my eye. I've been annotating, colouring over, or drawing pictures beside the prayers as I use them. It helps me to remember them.

Like this;

The section is 'Listening to God", and I srumbled upon this extract from the Revelations of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich, a 14th century hermit.

I've coloured the words that were most important to me in yellow and orange,

'Then said our Good Lord Jesus Christ:

'" I am the ground of thy beseeching... Pray inwardly, thou thee thinketh it savour the not: for it is profitable, though though feel not..."

If find my prayers are flimsy and shallow and unfocussed, this urges me to continue, even if they seem to have no savour, for apparently they are profitable, even though I feel that I'm doing anyting useful.

The next part of the extract seems rather more ominous,coloured in storm tones of blue and red and purple. All those double negatives do bend my brain a bit, but 'Thou shalt not be overcome' is a great promise to hold on to. Yellow and gold again.

The other bloggers joining in with Angela Almond's Lent Inspirations can be found here;