Global Week - Part 1
Readings for this week September 26 - 30
Click here for a pdf of this week’s readings
Day 1 – Follow the Leader
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Luke 4:16-30
We have an election fast approaching. Party leaders will be out in force, making speeches, reciting slogans, doing anything and everything that they feel enhances their message and image. They’ll lay out their plans for the country, should they get their hands on the reins of power. They’ll be trying to convince their followers – and everyone else too – that their way is best, that they are worth following, usually by telling you what you stand to gain from them if they win. People might make decisions about how to vote and who to follow based on what these leaders say and do, how well they say it and do it, and whether what they say tends to match up with what they do.
This passage from Isaiah that Jesus reads out is a manifesto of what he said he would do – and perfectly matches up with what he then went and did. This is what the kingdom of God looks like and what it is that he will be doing, working towards, bringing about. It is a blueprint of how he would spend his life, and the perfect summation of what anyone who claims to follow him would be doing too. Jesus shared with the world his mission in life. To follow in Jesus’ footsteps is to make his mission – and his practices in pursuit of that mission – our own, in the pursuit of the Father’s will. Being a disciple is taking part in a serious, joyful, important, transformative enactment of “follow the leader” – the leader in question being Jesus and the actions we are to imitate being his scriptural statement in the synagogue, a manifesto of compassion and love for the world.
Global Prayer – Syria
Pray for Syria, now in its 12th year of civil war:
· For those forced to flee the country and now in refugee camps.
· For an end to the violence and bloodshed.
· For those who have lost family and loved ones.
· For the refugees and the displaced of the world.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 2 – Finding Jesus
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Matthew 25:31-46
The synagogue manifesto told us what Jesus would do, and what we are to do as his faithful followers. Today’s parable tells us where we will find him as he does so, and where we should be so that we are in step with him. In the faces of the poor and the unknown and the lonely and the sick – in the faces of those simply deemed unimportant and unlovable, and therefore, we are told, not worth our time and love – we see the face of Jesus. Those who are sick, hungry, imprisoned – those isolated on the margins – this is where Jesus is, and where he calls us to be. This is where he wants us to be.
Jesus sends us out to all people because he has a heart for all people, especially those the rest of us are keen to ignore or pass by. Jesus sends us out, but he also waits for us. He stands at the beginning of the process as the one who sends us out to the world. And he sits in the darkened, unimportant, unnoticed corners of the world, waiting for us to find him, embrace him and love him. He made the proclamation in the synagogue; he then walked out the door and into the world to put his words into action. He does not tell his audience that when they feed the hungry, visit the sick and the imprisoned it is as if they are feeding and visiting him. He says that they are feeding and visiting him. Jesus’ identification with those on the margins is total – it is not figurative or metaphoric or exemplary, it is real.
Global Prayer – The Subcontinent
Spend time praying for:
· Wisdom and compassion for the countries’ leaders.
· An end to the religious and sectarian tensions and violence.
· The children who have been affected by the last few years of Covid restrictions.
· The persecuted church around the world.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 3 – God’s Good Creation
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Genesis 1:29-31
God is the creator. The earth, the heavens, and everything they contain are the result of his highly skilled design, weaving the tapestry of the heavens and the universe out of the overflow of his love. He did not need to create. He was not lacking anything in himself. He was not deficient. He created out of love, on a scale both immensely large and astonishingly tiny. And we are not a random collection of atoms but his personal handiwork. More than that, people are his best work, the ‘crowning glory’ of creation. We are the only creatures made in God’s own image and designed specifically to enjoy a close, loving relationship with him. God is love, and it’s his intention that we receive love from him, and reflect that love back to creation, and that we love him in return.
God looked at his creation and pronounced it ‘good,’ even ‘very good’ once he contemplated it in its totality. And it is that totality, and its interconnectedness and interdependence, that we need to remember. We cannot continue to divorce ourselves from the world around us, or see ourselves as above the concerns of the physical and material world. God set up the universe the way he wanted it to be—a place of immense variety and wonder, a unified whole, a place where people could enjoy his creation, tend it, and experience all the benefits of a loving relationship with their creator. Creation matters to God; it should matter to us too.
Global Prayer – Tuvalu
Pray for the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu:
· As the nation's existence is challenged by the rising sea level.
· For the youth who have limited career options outside of an unstable fishing industry.
· For western nations to take their global environmental responsibilities seriously.
· For other nations threatened with sea level ‘extinction’ and for our global environmental crisis.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 4 – Ploughshares and Peace
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Isaiah 2:1-5
Our world is not a peace-filled world. It seems that today there is not a corner of the world that is not somehow afflicted with unrest and dissension of varying degrees. Terrorism, crime, war, violence, injustice, protest and retaliation – all bound tightly together, often caused by one another – are some of the most important issues and crises facing our world today. The large part of the call of God’s mission and the task of his church is to be a place where peace is not only found, but worked for, strived for, struggled for whenever it is threatened. Whatever fruit our mission may bear is often degraded or destroyed if it is not accompanied by the call for peace, the struggle for peace, and the example of peace.
That swords and spears will be turned into ploughshares and hooks is both a promise that God will make good on and a challenge to us to work to fulfil. Peace can be costly to achieve, but it is necessary that we try in a world riven by war and hatred. We cannot let such hatred govern our words and actions in the name of God. Jesus prayed for those who crucified him. Stephen offered words of prayer for his killers as he was dying. The followers of Jesus, following his example on the cross, cannot be propagators and proponents of violence, whether that violence is directed at communities or individuals, whether the violence is physical or psychological or economic. The history of the church does not make for happy reading on this score. We need to do better as we go forward, whatever the situation and whatever the cost.
Global Prayer – Ukraine
Spend time praying for the nation of Ukraine:
· For peace to come to the nation and the fighting to end.
· For safety and protection for civilians.
· For those who have been displaced from their homes.
· For those without supplies and food as winter approaches.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes
Day 5 – Everyone, Everything, Everywhere, Eternally
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Revelation 7:9-10
This is where it ends. The target of God’s saving love is – everyone. The entire world. We are called to go and make disciples of every nation. In passages like today’s, we see the ultimate destination that commands like this lead us to. The place where people of every nation and tongue do meet together to offer praise to God. This is what it looks like when all people, from all places and all cultures and all walks of life, come together before God, in the presence of their Maker and with those whom they were made alongside, to live and worship together. All tribes, all peoples, all groups, all nations – no tribe missing, no people absent; everyone is here. All languages represented, all groups accounted for, everyone affirmed and welcomed into the presence of God.
We see the fulfilment of what the Great Commission calls us to in these passages where people from every nation and tribe and tongue worship and glorify the Lamb. We were sent to all nations – the whole world our mission field – to call people back to relationship with their Creator so that through the coming together of the most diverse display of people imaginable, people unified and redeemed, Christ would be glorified. God wants all people there, united together and praising the One who makes our redemption possible. It takes all of us there for that to happen the way God has always wanted it to – no one uninvited, no one left out, no one left behind.
Global Prayer – The World
Spend time praying for:
· Those in this world who do not yet know Jesus.
· The people and places you have a connection to.
· Those in bondage and slavery.
· God’s coming kingdom to break through in dark places.
· Your role and your place in God’s world.