Box Hill Baptist Church
Welcome to our church community.25 July 2010
Are we able to say the Lord’s prayer?
Our Father
*I cannot say Our if my religion has no room for others and their needs
*I cannot say Father if I do not demonstrate healthy nourishing of others in my daily living.
*I cannot say who art in heaven if all my interests are in things and possessions on earth.
*I cannot say hallowed be thy name if I am not holy.
*I cannot say thy kingdom come if I act like I am the centre of the universe.
*I cannot say thy will be done if I am unwilling or resentful of learning and growing experiences.
*I cannot say on earth as it is in heaven unless I am willing to serve and help others.
*I cannot say give us this day our daily bread without providing for others.
*I cannot say forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us if I continue to harbour a grudge against anyone or myself!
*I cannot say lead us not into temptation if I deliberately choose to remain in a situation where I am likely to be tempted.
*I cannot say deliver us from evil if I am not prepared to back up my plea for God’s help with constant prayer.
*I cannot say thine is the kingdom if I do not act as part of that kingdom-responsible, caring, and willing to serve.
*I cannot say thine is the glory if I am seeking my own glory first.
*I cannot say forever if I am too anxious about each day’s worries and activities.
*I cannot say Amen unless I honestly say, “Cost what it may, this is my prayer.”
13 June 2010
Today we welcome Suzanne Ashton to reflect with us. Suzanne is a ministry candidate within Churches of Christ, and has been travelling with us over the past couple of months, getting a sense of the wider community of God. As Suzanne invites us to consider the ‘signs of life’ around us, I’m drawn to this Bruce Prewer poem.
“He Goes on Ahead of You”
“There you will see him” Matthew 28:6
He meets me on the calm Coorong as pelicans sail by.
I sense him in the southern Cross setting over Swan Bay.
He greets me on Mt Wellington, watching the sun come up.
I see him fossicking for hope around a rubbish tip.
He seeks my aid at Alice Springs with those of shattered creed.
I find him busking on the streets, ignored by the hard crowd.
He waves to me at the MCG as if he’s my best mate.
I watch him with the refugees I do not want to meet.
He joins me down by Bondi beach eating a chicko roll.
I feel him in my darkest night, the realest of things real.
He looks at me in the brown eyes of a tired traffic cop.
I spot him in the roaring crowd that cheers the Melbourne Cup.
He bumps me in the Christmas rush in Brisbane’s crowded mall.
I see him with the Blue Nurses who go the second mile.
He prays alone up on Kings Park with Perth’s streetlights below.
I hear him speak a word of hope which nothing can belie.
He calls to me outside a church where pastors preach to please.
I find him shivering in a squat while the casino plays.
He sings a song in Arnhem Land inside a frescoed cave.
I see him in an old photo taken at Anzac Cove.
He leaves his tracks of blood around in many a situation.
I meet him in the crucial task of reconciliation
6 June 2010
Today we have the opportunity of sharing the story and reflection of Paul Smith, who has recently returned from a three month study tour of Great Britain on a Churchill Scholarship. This fabulous experience has stimulated a whole lot of thinking, and we are looking forward to hearing what he has to share about ‘creating sanctuary’, in the context of our own community.
Sanctuary : a holy place – a sacred place, a place of asylum, of safety, of being held in God.
Sometimes we discover ourselves in a place in which we feel transformed. This may be a place in our hearts, in our homes, in Nature, with loved ones, in a community, in a building. Being in such a place can seem almost a mystical experience…. an experience of safety, of belonging, of love, of nourishment, of inspiration. Being in such a place is always an invitation to a deeper communion with God.
30 May 2010
We gather together today with a range of experiences that are uniquely ours. They can be difficult and joyous days, heavy or abundant days. The words shared today, may or may not express our personal experience at any given time. Certainly none of our words can contain the experience, but they may suggest a pathway to negotiate our days, in particular the experience of loss and grief. This day, as we gather, we seek to create a space to name our losses, to acknowledge our griefs, and to place them before an eternal God.
And then, as we leave, may we go with this blessing :
Let us go into the world,
Glad that we have loved,
Free to weep for that which we have lost,
Free to hold each other in our human frailty,
Empowered to live life to the full
And to affirm the hope of human existence.
Amen
2 May 2010
Today we listen carefully to the question “who is your neighbour?” In responding to the question, we are challenged to look beyond the familiar, to those whose needs for food, shelter and education are palpable. Our focus today, is upon the work of TEAR, particularly in Africa. As we partner with a community abroad, we are seeking to work to improve the lives of the poorest and most marginalized people, and seek to offer an opportunity for the education of children who might then be empowered to learn and direct their own future. May we be open to learn so that we might find opportunities for ongoing learning for the children of Ethiopia!”
11 April 2010
Preparing this cross for you after the service on Easter Friday, was a
deepening experience of an image of God that is present in suffering and
life-giving possibility. It has always struck me how difficult it is to
balance an image of a cross, an instrument of death, with the possibility of
life. And similarly, how this story of death and life is actually present to
us moment by moment, rather than bound up with an image of a God out there offering life beyond, as opposed to eternity in our hearts now.
This passage from Revelation 1, offers something extraordinary about
bridging the time-space bound world that I am in, with a God who is and was
and is to come. a permanence of the presence of God, that does not buy into
a dualistic notion of God up there and us down here. This is not an image of
God’s ransom or of ‘substitution’, or indeed of sacrifice. Rather, I think
this cross creates a God imaged as present with humanity in all the
suffering and pain and experience of life. The notion of ‘beginning and end’
and all in between is present here, as opposed to earthly and heavenly
dualism! The image of the adorned cross that we have in the front of our
church, seems to bridge that gap… calling us to embrace the
vulnerability of living as the transcendent communion we have within the
nature of God.
Anne
28 MARCH 2010
In God we trust.
In the One who comes humbly among us,
taking on our humanity and breaking our idols,
in God we trust.
Riding a donkey and weeping over Jerusalem,
receiving shouts of praise from the common people,
gaining the enmity of the proud and the powerful,
in God we trust.
Riding to face a destiny foretold by prophets,
entering the holy city but with no where to lay his head,
coming to his own but his own not receiving him,
facing cruel death for the sake of those who love him not,
in God we trust.
This Palm Sunday Man,
this Passion Sunday God,
in God we trust.
Wander – This Sunday evening.
Come and join us for a beautifully simple experience as we create a space to walk a Labyrinth, reflect, pray, listen. Wander and wonder.
There will be a short introduction to help everyone understand the Labyrinth and how to walk it, and then an open space for you to walk at your own pace, and/or just sit on the side and pray.
If you haven’t walked a Labyrinth before, we encourage you to come and experience it.
21 March 2010
7pm-8.30pm
14 March 2010
Today we reflect upon the story of the Prodigal Son, that wasteful young man, whose adventure eventually leads him home. We consider how we all can become ‘lost’, disoriented by life’s journey, and wonder about how that ‘re-orientation’ may occur. I share with you a prayer that has nourished me this week, by Bruce Prewer : God our motherly Father, our brotherly Saviour, our sisterly Spirit-Friend, we ask that in our prayers and in the ordinary affairs of each day, we may exhibit your generous spirit to other people. We pray for the millions of homeless people whom we will never meet but whose predicament we see on the TV. Please bless those humanitarian agencies who attempt to care for them, and all who give generously to support their work. We pray for unwanted or destitute people in our own country, from Darwin to Port Arthur and Port Headland to Byron Bay. Please give both wisdom and a generous spirit to Federal and State Governments, and strengthen the welfare ministry of churches. We pray for any among us here today, who with dignity and courage are secretly enduring misfortunes or ongoing worries. Please give your peace and healing to them, and keep us sensitive, that we may recognise a cry for help if it comes our way and respond generously. We pray for neighbours or workmates, and for those familiar but nameless faces we notice each day in train or bus, elevator, bank or supermarket. Please bless each according to their need, and without any prying or self importance on our part, make us ready to help in the hour of need. We pray for all the bewildered, lost souls; for young folk hitting out, puzzled adults who find that neither career nor family satisfy their deepest need, sour elderly folk who are jealous of the faith and happiness of others. Please gather the lost into your loving arms, and help each of us to treat awkward, prickly people with the generous respect that you have for each. Loving Saviour, seeking the lost and the unlovely, we worship you. Caring Spirit, enabling the weak and the meek, we worship you. Holy God, generous beyond all calculation, we worship you. Amen!
7 March 2010
May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers and half-truths
May God bless us with discomfort at superficial relationships
So that we may live deep within our hearts
May God bless us with anger at injustice and oppression
May God bless us with anger at exploitation of all people
So that we may work for justice and freedom
So that we may work for freedom and peace
So that we may work for justice
May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, starvation and war
So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them,
and turn their pain, their pain, into joy
And may God bless us with enough foolishness
to believe that we can make a difference in this world
So that God can do what others claim cannot be done
Amen
