John Buchan, author of The Thirty Nine Steps, Governor General of Canada, and Presbyterian, once said ‘An atheist is someone with no invisible means of support’. To re-phrase it positively, one could also say ‘a Christian is someone with an invisible means of support’. And that means of support is prayer.
Prayer as a word may be singular, but the modes and wavelengths of prayer are plural. These weeks of autumn we have been exploring a model of prayer that Jesus himself gave us, and its few phrases include various dimensions, including adoration, thanksgiving … and petition, like last week’s ‘Give us this day our daily bread’.
This morning we pause to consider ‘petition’ more fully. If God is all-knowing and good, why do we need to ask God for anything? and why are not all our petitions fulfilled?
The doors of the sanctuary will be open and our service of worship will begin at 10:30 a.m. (Please see the post under ‘Special Events’ in the column to the right for the protocols and shape of the service). The service will also be live-streamed, active just after 10:20 a.m. with organ music for meditation, commencing with the Entry of the Scriptures at 10:30 a.m., found at https://youtu.be/toCLjtSEW08
The Order of Service, music notes and announcements can be found at the end of this post.
Once the service has ended, a recording will be available on our channel shortly after the live-streaming has ended – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzEy41z3sqfRm8X_lLfKGUA
Free parking is available Sunday mornings in the surface civic lot off Queen Street behind St. Andrew’s, and on the streets of the neighbourhood – please note that time-of-day restrictions north of Queen are not enforced on Sundays. For accessible entrance to the sanctuary, please use the ramp by the western-most door along Princess Street.