Do not be ashamed

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Wisdom and Grace

Bifrost Arts

Today is Monday the 26th of January, the feast of Saints Timothy and Titus, in the 3rd week of Ordinary Time.

Bifrost Arts sing, ‘Wisdom and Grace’. As you listen, become aware of the consoling presence of Christ in your life – which could be at work this very moment…

Teach us to number our days

That we may apply our hearts to Your ways

O! Teach us to number our days

with wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace.

Wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace

You've been our home and our dwelling

our place in all generations.

Before the earth or the mountains were formed,

Lord, You were God.

Teach us to number our days

That we may apply our hearts to Your ways

O! Teach us to number our days

with wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace.

Wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace

Now the span of our lives,

It is made of sorrow and labour

As the days pass away like the grass

How soon we are gone.

Teach us to number our days

That we may apply our hearts to Your ways

O! Teach us to number our days

with wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace.

Wisdom and grace

Let the work of our hands bring you praise,

set Your favour upon us.

O establish the work of our hands,

May Your kingdom come!

Teach us to number our days

That we may apply our hearts to Your ways

O! Teach us to number our days

with wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace.

Wisdom and grace, wisdom and grace

2:57

Today’s reading is from Saint Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy.

2 Timothy 1:1-8

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus,

To Timothy, my beloved child:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God.

5:05

Devotion

Dear Gravity

Can you receive Paul’s message to Timothy as a message to you now, the message of ‘grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord’? If you can, then how does that leave you feeling?

Imagine if someone affirmed your faith, like this, as ‘sincere faith’. How would you feel? Encouraged? Embarrassed?

And if those words were spoken directly to you, that ‘you have a gift of God that is within you’ – a gift that you can rekindle – what would you want to do about it?

Might all this be true? Might all of those “ifs” in fact be true? As you listen again to the reading, think about that, that all of these words may also be meant for you, now.

8:31

2 Timothy 1:1-8

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus,

To Timothy, my beloved child:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God.

10:26

The reading tells us that our calling and the gifts we receive are freely given by God, not created by us, or earned, or deserved by our efforts. What gift – that you have not earned – do you feel the desire to ask for from God? Pray for it in your own words.

12:26

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be

World without end

Amen