pray

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All Saints' Church, Aston (photo from their FB page)
The Rev. Ian Jennings is visiting Texas to see his family in San Antonio, and he and his wife are getting some time in Port Aransas by themselves. I met Ian last year, when he made the same trip.

He is rector of All Saints', Aston, and serves two other churches in the north of England. We became Facebook friends last year after his visit, so we were able to arrange for him to preach on his visit at our Wednesday Healing Eucharist.

It fell on the feast day of Sergius, Abbot of Holy Trinity, Moscow (1392), and in telling Sergius's story Ian reminded us that in going to the wilderness to pray (and eventually to form an abbey) Sergius was not retreating away from the front lines of the church, he was going to the front lines. The place of prayer in the life of the church is the "front line."


Youth Group wrapped up Monday night with Compline, as usual. Tuesday evening Beverly Moorhouse led the second weekly yoga class, with another full room. This morning Johnie Swenson led the first weekly meditation group; we finished up in time for Bible Study. Then it was on to Healing Eucharist.

Compline, Yoga, meditation, Bible Study, Holy Eucharist; those aren't even our primary prayer time: Sunday Morning Holy Eucharist.


I give thanks to God for the many expressions of prayer from the people of Trinity, and the opportunities to pray for our community: our church and our world. In our prayers, we pray for and in behalf of those who are unable to stop and pray.

Our wilderness may look very different from the one Sergius went out to, or the one surrounding Ian's church in Aston, but our wilderness here on the edge of the gulf is a magnificent place to pray. We pray for the church, and for the world. We pray for ongoing renewal of the church so that we may reach out to those in need; to be a "spiritual and charitable resource of God's love" for the world.

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