Daily Prayer at General Synod: An Introduction

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The sun just won’t go down fast enough these days. Toddler and baby are, by 8pm, terribly over-tired, but it takes the complete darkening of sky to soothe them into sleep. Bathing, changing, tickling and cuddling, rocking and singing, reading slowly the same story, with the same colourful pictures and bold text I’ve been seeing for the past month, at least- just the usual routine.

It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done, has not been done. Can I let it be? I think of the day, at the end of which it seems that more has been left undone than done, and what has been done has been the usual things: things of joy in play, things that pull on my patience and twig my frustrations, the usual stuff of multiple diaper changes, inopportune phone calls, feeding mess, temper tantrums; and through it all those fleeting, inexpressible delights in a child’s smile, a successful clean-up, a friend dropping in for a surprise visit. Yes, it’s true: I’m not sure that I would have remembered these wee joys, had it not been for taking this time at the end of the day to remember who I am, who we are in God.

And in this soon-to-be-quiet household, we turn to the church’s rhythm of Compline, baby calmed, toddler in my arms (I can’t hold the book, so make do with what I can remember of the service!) I don’t know that they recognize the words yet, but they know the rhythm. And as I try to still my own heart for prayer, I know I and my children are not alone, but bound with all those at this time, and in other times, in my town and other towns and counties, whose evening prayer offers the day to God, prays for peace in our hearts and in the world, and gives voice to our trust that God is watching over us, with even more love and attention than I hold my own children on this well-worn couch. “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.”

There is something grating about the understanding of prayer as "work" as if work were just a four letter word. There is a truth to this understanding that we must own, however, for it lives in the very heart of what it means to be a liturgical people. The word Liturgy, in Greek, Leiturgia, means "the work of the people for the good of the people." As liturgical people our leiturgia is the harvesting of God's work: the gathering of God's bounty for the good of the world. As people of faith when we enter into the  prayer of the church we are, in some mysterious and magnificent way, gathered into one throughout the ages and across continents.  Through the opening of our hearts we become the vehicle of God's love and mercy:  we pray and we listen, we are challenged and we act, drawing upon a power that means we can do so much more than we can ask for or imagine. God's power, given to us to do God's work. And so, we become aware with the passing of each sun-rise and sun-set of the awesome mystery of God's work of creation and salvation - and more than that, we become aware that we are a part of it.

As a member of the General Synod, you are a part of a working body – discerning and deliberating, engaging in dialogue, reflection and decision. All of this work is anchored in the work of you, the body, at prayer. This is who we are, first and last: a people held by and called by a loving God through the Spirit, to be God’s witness to the world of the love, forgiveness, reconciliation and new life we have been given in Christ. Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, daily eucharists, are the offerings that both frame and nurture our life here.

Each morning, The Lord’s Prayer will be sung, using the following setting: The Lord’s Prayer para. Keith Landis, 1986. Music: Keith Landis, 1980; harm. John Rutter, 1986. Text and music ©1994 Selah Publishing Co., and can be found in New Songs of Rejoicing, Selah Publishing.

The meeting of the General Synod will end at Christ Church Cathedral in Hamilton with the Closing Eucharist and Primatial Installation.