THE DELIVERANCE OF JERUSALEM

PRAYER MOMENT 

Tuesday 30 December 2014

THE DELIVERANCE OF JERUSALEM

             

Pause. Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading: “Anna came by just at that moment and spoke of the child to all who looked forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem.” (Luke 2:36-40)

Reflection. The deliverance of Jerusalem means one thing to the Palestinians and another to the Israelis. But Luke had something quite different in mind when he gave Anna a ‘walk on part’ in the drama of his second chapter. Jerusalem is the ‘holy city’ to Jews, Christians and Muslims. We hope that one day it will be the ‘city of peace’ that its name denotes but in the meantime it is a symbol of the deep aspirations of the human heart. We live in an agony of unfulfilment. We yearn and yet we can never have our yearnings satisfied. Some of us accumulate possesions and power to try to fulfil thse longings but the media is full of stories about those who have never having enough. The truth that Luke points to is that our longings are only fulfilled when we go beyond what we can see and touch and understand.

Prayer. Lord, let us reach for the ‘deliverence of Jerusalem’ in the way ‘we live and move and have our being.’ Amen.  

David Harold-Barry SJ