The Eight O’Clock
News February 2017
8 am Service, Christ Church, Kenilworth
Week of Breakthrough Prayer When you read this, the first month of the year will be over and the Week of Prayer will be drawing to a close. Our church community will be standing at the brink of a new direction, anticipating living our lives in a ‘deeper in and further out’ direction. New Year’s Resolutions may already have been broken and in the wake of early failure, this resolve may have little chance of succeeding in the long term. After all— where did January go? Some may not even have thought about changes that could be made in daily living. So, why not make knowing Jesus more and being more like Him, a resolution for a new you? The timing at the beginning of a new year is not important, it is rather God’s timing that matters. In thinking about how the Lord is calling me, I picked up a book that I have had for some time that I had only started reading but abandoned shortly into it—not because of the book itself but possibly because of some other demand on my life at the time. Now, in opening its pages once again, so much has resonated deeply within me; even the flyleaf words drew me deeper. One Thousand Gifts beckons you ‘to leave the parched ground of pride, fear and whiteknuckle control and abandon yourself to the God who overflows your cup’. Indeed my cup has overflowed and I have experienced what the book’s author, Ann Voskamp, writes, ‘Joy and pain are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through those who don’t numb themselves to really living’. So how does she suggest we approach both the joy and pain of living? Chara—deep joy—is only found at the table of the euCHARisteo: the table of thanksgiving. She calls it ‘a triplet of stars, a constellation in the black’: Charis (grace), Eucharisteo (Thanksgiving) and Chara (Joy). Grace, thanksgiving, joy. Eucharisteo—a Greek word that might make meaning of everything? ‘Eucharisteo precedes the miracle’, she says. Think of Jesus giving thanks outside Lazarus’s tomb and also when He took ‘even the bread of death’—He gave thanks. Paul wrote about living joy in every situation, the full life February 2017 Eight O’Clock News
of eucharisteo. He said in Phiippians 4:11-12: “I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything”. Saint John of Avila (d1569) put it like this, “one act of thanksgiving when things go wrong with us, is worth a thousand thanks when things are agreeable to our inclinations”. In One Thousand Gifts, Ann dares us to live fully right where we are. She keeps a gratitude journal throughout the book: 1000 gifts—‘Jam piled high on toast’, ‘Moonlight on pillows’, ‘Toothless smiles’, ‘Stepping over a dog when coming in through the dark’... Somehow, for me, this living in gratitude links to what Philip Yancey wrote about prayer: ‘Regarding prayer, I flow downstream, as if I’m pleading with God, as though He does not know my needs. Instead, I should go upstream, begin with God who is on the throne and pray kingdom-minded prayers’. Giving thanks before the miracle, expressing gratitude before the answer to prayer frees us from that whiteknuckle control. We can then surrender more fully to God’s giving of Himself and become a blessing ourselves. With every grace experienced in eucharisteo, the Lord’s voice can be heard, “You are precious to me. You are honoured and I love you” (Isaiah 43.4). “For you are a chosen people a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). - Cheryl Anderson