Yesterday I took some photos. I’d scouted the road on Saturday (doing an analogue or film photos trip). Two farm buildings that had partially collapsed. In the dark, at dusk. However, The following morning, after church, the light was right.
If you do not build well on your foundations, and you do not maintain it, the building will collapse. Consider the text: Paul is writing to a church he founded. And the first thing he says is that he is praying for them.
1Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:
2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3I thank my God every time I remember you, 4constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, 5because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. 6I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. 7It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. 9And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
This is where our Roman and Orthodox friends can teach the Protestants and the Reformed. For they worry less about correct theology, and more about correct prayer. They accept (as we all should do) that our foundation is in Christ: they question less those that have gone before than the reformed — for we consider that all are in error.
But they know how to pray. As we used to. The old Puritans would pray for hours — then go out and work, often taking their discipline from the very monks that had been driven out of England within living memory.
For the church is not people. Maintenance is not weed whacking and cleaning gutters and painting. It is prayer, particularly for wisdom: the times are not conducive to the Christian, and discernment is needed now more than ever.
