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A Pastoral Assistant
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Dear Friends
Barbara has asked me and, to my knowledge, several others to write letters to the Church at All Saints’, having first read the messages given to the 7 churches in Asia Minor in the Book of Revelation. I can assure you that it is no easy task, even after having prayed for guidance, as the last thing I want to do is to appear judgemental. Although John does mention the strengths of the 7 churches, there are words of criticism from him for all the churches except the one at Philadelphia.
No, what I would want to emphasise is that without exception the churches are urged
to listen. Whatever our aims and objectives may be, we shall never learn to recognize
the way forward if we do not sharpen our sense of spiritual hearing, by which I mean
listening not just to the Bible passages read to us each Sunday or to the prayers
or the sermon, but searching for God’s response to our prayers, our prayers for forgiveness,
our prayers for others, our prayers for self-
I would add that it is no bad thing to keep one’s eyes open as well, looking for times when an odd coincidence can be seen as more than that, perhaps an occasion when God is saying to us “There you are! What do you see (or hear) in that?”
Of course, I am not saying anything new. Jesus’ teaching is full of criticism for those who see but see not, and hear but hear not. I venture to suggest that if we do not look in hope for God’s word to come to us here and now in our daily lives, we really deny ourselves and our faith as followers of Christ. I wonder sometimes if in the Samuel/Eli story, the word of God did not often reach people because they had lost the ability to recognize it.
One final thought-
