May grace and peace be yours in abundance.

In my reading and meditation last week I cam across St. Peter’s first letter to his churches – and through them to The Church. He writes, “May grace and peace be yours in abundance.” (verse 2). This is his prayer of blessing for them: “May grace and peace be yours in abundance.”

This led me to pray the same prayer for St. Mary’s, for my friends and fellow parishioners there, for my family, for a friend starting as rector in a new church, for our country and our leaders, and for many others as God brought them to mind, “May grace and peace be yours in abundance.”

The experience opened my eyes to how God uses scripture to shape our prayer. St. Paul writes (Romans 8:26 ), “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” Part of how the Spirit does this is through the Spirit-inspired bible.

Later in the day, at Evening Prayer, I heard in scripture an example of how not to pray. (Whenever we come across people talking with Jesus in the Gospels we are being taught how to talk with Jesus in our prayer.) Jesus was in the home of Mary and Martha where Martha was providing the practical hospitality while Mary sat at his feet and listened. Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” (Luke 10:40.) To generalize, “Lord, tell other people to do what I want!” Jesus suggest that perhaps this prayer isn’t inspired by his Holy Spirit!

May grace and peace be yours in abundance and may the Holy Spirit guide your prayer.