Deus Misereatur

  Drawn from the Heidelberg Catechism on the Lord’s Prayer   Our Father Who art in heaven : we come to you trusting and rejoicing that you are our Father through Jesus Christ, and that you will answer us, as promised, with as much readiness as, and more readiness than, our earthly parents. And we trust that we may expect from your almighty power all things necessary for body and soul. Hear us, Father, as we pray.  Hallowed be thy name : Enable us rightly to know, reverence, magnify, and praise you in all your works through which shine forth your power, wisdom, goodness, justice, mercy, and truth; and likewise to so order our whole life, in thought, word, and work, that your name may never be blasphemed but honored and praised on our account.  Thy kingdom come : Preserve and increase your Church, to include this congregation and these churches in the greater OKC area, Trinity UMC, Village, Wesley, and Del City First Church of the Nazarene. So govern us by your Wo...

A Prayer based on the Heidelberg Catechism 27 and 28: Mighty God, whose almighty and everywhere present power - as it were by your own hand - upholds heaven, earth, and all creatures, and so governs them that herb and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty - indeed all things - come not by chance or mechanical procedure, but by your fatherly hand: Grant me to be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and with a view to the future I may have good confidence in you - O faithful God and Father - that no creature or condition will ever separate me from your love, since all creatures are so in your hand that without your will they cannot so much as move. All of this I ask through our great high priest, the Lord Jesus. Amen. Mike

Recently I was reading a Catholic author on prayer, Romano Guardini, “The Art of Praying”. As he was laying out the importance of having a routine for prayer, especially the “time for prayer”, he brought out what follows: “Six days of the week are dedicated to work, one to rest. On working days man is bound by duty, on the seventh day he is free. ( . . . ) Sunday, therefore, is the day of God and, for this very reason the day of man. Its meaning has been largely forgotten. In our modern age it has become a day of vaguely festive character and ultimately merely an occasion for recreation and pleasure” (25). I appreciated his observation and recognition. The Lord’s Day has fallen into the utilitarian trap of “what works for me” and so it has lost most of its vitality and meaning. It is only a matter of time before it is discarded all together. But if the Lord’s Day is primarily the Lord’s day, that changes things. Then it truly becomes the day of man, because “The Sabbath was made ...

As I prepared for this Sunday evening’s Vespers, I was pondering the Heidelberg Catechism section covered under Lord’s Day 14. Question and Answer 35 address the full divinity of Jesus, while affirming His full humanity: “What is the meaning of these words " He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary "? That God's eternal Son, who is, and continues true and eternal God, took upon him the very nature of man, of the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary, by the operation of the Holy Ghost; that he might also be the true seed of David, like unto his brethren in all things, sin excepted.” As important as that answer is, it’s the 36th Question and Answer which caught my attention. “What profit dost thou receive by Christ's holy conception and nativity? That he is our Mediator; and with His innocence and perfect holiness, covers in the sight of God, my sins, wherein I was conceived and brought forth.” The significance of this answer is how the writers o...