Today’s thought is by Frederick Buechner
Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too. – Frederick Buechner
Draw us, O Christ, by grace irresistible, to the centre of all faith and to the heart of all sacrifice; to the deepest of all wells and to a work that is not our own; even your holy Cross, to which we cling and by which we are held; for your own name’s sake. Amen.
Dora Greenwell (1821-1882)
Wall-breaking, bridge-building, chasm-spanning God,
stretching out across immeasurable distance;
from eternity into this now,
from holiness to this ordinariness,
from endless light into this darkness,
hold us close and make us one.
Break down the walls of our disagreements,
bridge the gaps between our differences
and span the chasm between the divine and the human
that we should know, should feel, our sins forgiven,
blest with this antepast of heaven. Amen.
Inspired by Charles Wesley’s hymn, Where Shall my Wondering Soul Begin?
Mark Wakelin, President
of the British Methodist Conference, 2012/2013