Royal events attract the attention of millions around the world. It is estimated some 4 billion people watched the funeral of her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II – more than twice the population of the world when she was born.

How different was another royal occasion, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem to the acclamation of the crowds calling on him as God’s King.

A King’s Welcome. The Gospels tell us that Jesus deliberately set the scene for his entry into Jerusalem that day. Riding into the city on the back of the foal of a donkey, he was fulfilling a prophecy about the Messiah made by Zechariah some 500 years before (Zechariah 9:9).

When Jesus prepared to ride the donkey, the disciples threw their cloaks on its back, and Luke records that as Jesus rode down from the Mount of Olives people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. His entry into Jerusalem had the hallmarks of a king entering his city (Luke 19:35f).

Indeed, Luke along with other Gospel writers wants us to feel just how much of a royal procession it was: As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!…” (Luke 19:37f).

The crowds were singing one of the festival psalms for the Passover Feast (Psalm 118:26). It’s a song of victory, a hymn of praise to the one God who never loses his battles and establishes his kingdom.

Peace was another theme: “…Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” they sang. Peace was the angels’ song at the announcement of Jesus’ birth. Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people… the angels had sung (Luke 2:12).

However, there was an irony here that the crowds in their enthusiasm seemed to have missed: this king was not riding a warrior horse. It was no royal or presidential motorcade with an armed security.

And there is another element to that first Palm Sunday which Luke records: As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. …  because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God” (Luke 19:41-44).

As Jesus came over the top of the Mount of Olives and saw the city, it is clear that uppermost in his thoughts were his suffering and the destruction of nation’s capital, David’s royal city. Yes, he was the king coming ‘in the name of the Lord’ as the people sang. But he knew he was not coming to take up David’s throne at that time as everyone expected. Rather, he foresaw the city of Jerusalem – a smoking, desolate ruin.

Why would this happen? Because Jerusalem failed to recognize the One who had visited it.

On that first Palm Sunday there were joy, acclamation, and tears. Yet, five days later the unthinkable occurred: Jesus was put to death by crucifixion. The contrast between the first Palm Sunday when crowds acclaimed Jesus as king and the day he was strung up on a cross, could not have been more stark. One day the crowds were saying he was God’s promised king; within a week the dying Jesus was exposed to the vulgar frivolity of the Roman soldiers as they offered him wine and made a party of it. “If you are the king of the Jews,” they mocked, “save yourself” (Luke 23:37).

The events of that Thursday evening and Friday had moved swiftly. Jesus had been betrayed, arrested, brought to trial before the Jewish religious leaders, before Herod, and before Pilate. Herod and Pilate had declared him innocent of the charges against him. But the Jewish leaders were adamant he should be put to death.

And when Jesus was nailed to the cross, Pilate the Roman governor in Judea had ordered, as was the custom, that the charge against Jesus be nailed above his head – ‘King of the Jews.’ With Jesus’ resurrection and his conquest of death, Pilate’s notice was prophetic.

Why then did Jesus die? Jesus himself answers the question. In Luke chapter 19, verse 10 he says, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”.

The whole of the New Testament and the voice of the Holy Spirit in our hearts tells us why: he died for you and for me. As we read in Romans chapter 5, verse 8 the punishment for our sin was laid on him. Indeed, when he was dying, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

Everyone watching the scene that day knew he was innocent. The them he was praying for are all who shut their minds to the voice of truth, the voice of the Spirit, and the testimony of their conscience. He was praying for the Roman soldiers and the Jewish leaders; he was praying for the crowd and his followers. But he was also praying then for you and me, for none of us has perfectly honored him as we should.

And isn’t it also true that although we have heard the story of the cross, there are times when we have refused to let it change us? How often have we failed to reckon that our indifference or arrogance towards him contributed to his pain.

How encouraging it is to reflect on the twin themes of Palm Sunday and Good Friday. As we consider their significance, we need to ensure that our own relationship with the king is secure. And when the joy of that really touches us, surely we’ll want to share it with family and friends as well as many others.

A prayer. Almighty and everlasting God, in tender love towards humankind you sent your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, to take our nature upon him and to suffer death on the cross, so that all should follow the example of his great humility. Grant that we may follow the example of his suffering and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever.  Amen.

© John G. Mason

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The subject of death is not something we usually discuss. It’s too personal and confronting. Yet it’s the ultimate certainty we all face. It’s why literature, film and philosophy so often dwell on the themes of our mortality. But it’s rare that anyone claims they can do anything about it. Death is assumed to be the inevitable end for everyone.

In John chapter 10 we learn that life had been heating up for Jesus in Jerusalem. The Jewish leaders had attempted to stone him for his apparent blasphemy (10:31).

So Jesus left the city for the region east of the Jordan River. There he learned that his friend Lazarus, brother of Martha and Mary, was dying in the village of Bethany, near Jerusalem. Then learning that Lazarus had died, and against the advice of his disciples who feared the Jewish leaders, Jesus returned to Bethany where he was first met by Martha.

In the course of their conversation where she said to Jesus that if he had come sooner her brother would not have died, he made an amazing assertion: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

His words are astonishing, for in saying, “I am the resurrection and the life…” Jesus wasn’t saying, ‘I promise resurrection and life’. Nor was he saying, ‘I procure,’ or, ‘I bring’ but ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’

Furthermore, in saying ‘I am’ he uses the very words God used when he disclosed his name to Moses. Unless Jesus is equal with God his words are nothing short of blasphemy.

“I am the resurrection and the life…” he says. “Do you believe this?” he asked Martha.

John records that Jesus then met Martha’s sister, Mary who fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Once again Jesus was rebuked for not having come sooner. But unlike Martha Mary allows her grief to flow. John tells us then that Martha and Mary weren’t the only ones to grieve:

Jesus wept (11:35).

These words constitute the shortest verse in the Bible. How poignant, how stark it is.

The word wept that John uses speaks of a deep anguished cry of grief. It’s the cry of heartfelt loss, the kind of grief that explodes from the depths of our inner being.

Why did Jesus react this way? He didn’t weep like this when news came that Jairus’s daughter had died. Certainly Lazarus was a close friend but Jesus knew he was going to pull him out of that tomb.

Jesus wept. I suggest he was grieving for our human plight. No matter how successful we are, how good and compassionate we are, death awaits us all.

Men and women, created in God’s image, are now broken images and broken images cannot endure the pure light of God’s perfection and glory. Jesus was grieving for what we as men and women had lost. As in Adam all die, Paul the Apostle writes in First Corinthians chapter 15.

At Lazarus’s graveside, Jesus felt the full impact of this and wept. But there is a sense in which Jesus grieved at what our loss would mean for him. It would mean that he himself would have to die. Only through his death could he conquer death and raise to life anyone who turns to him and believes in him. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22).

Could it be true? The witness of Jesus’ own resurrection, the New Testament, the evidence of history, the existence of the Christian church, point to the conclusion that Jesus’ words were the truth. Apart from Jesus Christ we have no certainty about the future.

And if there is a future life, how can we be assured that we are good enough to achieve it? Most people are aware of their failures – failures that we don’t want to talk about, let alone tell anyone about. It’s one of the reasons John Newton’s Amazing Grace is so well known: it speaks to our sense of lostness, our need to be rescued and our hope for the future.

John’s record doesn’t stop with Jesus’ words to Martha and Mary. He went to the tomb and asked that the stone be rolled away. We can only imagine the scene. A graveyard, a cave in a hillside, filled with bodies and bones. The stench of rotting bodies as the gravestone was rolled aside.

And then, standing at the entrance of the tomb, Jesus called, “Lazarus, come out!”

For a moment everyone must have thought he was mad. But then, a sight to behold emerged: still in his grave clothes Lazarus appeared.

Voices around us today insist that because we now know the laws of nature we can be sure that miracles like this can’t happen. To which Dr. John Lennox, emeritus professor of mathematics and philosophy at Oxford University, responds, ‘The laws of nature that science observes are the observable regularities that God the creator has built into the universe. However, such ‘laws’ don’t prevent God from intervening if he chooses. When he does, we are able to identify the irregularity and speak of it as ‘a miracle’’.

Men and women have come a long way in understanding and harnessing quantum chemistry, physics and medicine, but nothing compares with the naked power that Jesus wielded at that moment.

The scene is a picture of a time yet to come when Jesus will once again appear on the stage of world events. On that day he will cry out in a loud voice, “Come forth,” and all the dead from throughout time will rise.

The question Jesus had asked Martha that day was: “Do you believe this?” Let me ask, can you say with Martha, “Yes Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world?”

Death is not the end of our story. Rather for all who turn to Jesus and believe in him, death opens the door to a new beginning of life that is everlasting.

A prayer. We beseech you, almighty God, to look in mercy on your people; so that by your great goodness we may be governed and preserved evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

© John G. Mason

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You may want to listen to Christ Our Hope in Life and Death from Keith and Kristyn Getty and Matt Papa.

In our troubled world many long for the days of the great revivals – perhaps the days of the Wesleys and George Whitfield in England and in the US, or the years of Billy Graham, or the days of great revival in East Africa.

Let me suggest we shouldn’t be discouraged. Jesus himself began with a small group of men and women and look what happened: by the 4th century AD the influence of God’s gospel had had spread throughout the Roman Empire. This hadn’t happened through armed conflict but through the work of God’s Word and God’s Spirit.

Come with me to the events that unfold in John chapter 9 – a chapter that reads like a drama in three Acts.

Act 1. As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of him who sent me’ (9:1-4a).

A blind man begging on the side of the road was a familiar sight. But this man hadn’t contracted blindness through the dusty, disease laden air of those roads. He had been born blind, and the question Jesus’ close followers asked reflected Jewish theology: ‘Who sinned? This man or his parents?’ they asked. People often ask a similar question today when things go awry: ‘What have I done to deserve this?’

Jesus’ response was unexpected: ‘Sin hadn’t led to this man’s blindness. Rather, it was to reveal God’s power’. Consider the simplicity of the drama that followed. Jesus doesn’t look for any expression of faith, he simply acts. And like all the gospel miracles, he wields the creative power of God. It’s a miracle which speaks of the uniqueness of Jesus. Jesus is a unique man doing unique things.

He spat on the ground, made clay and anointed the man’s eyes. ‘Go and wash…’ he commanded. The man obeyed and returned seeing.

Just think how this simply stated drama would be written up today. There’d be a detailed description of what Jesus said and did. There’d be interviews with people who witnessed it, together with the inevitable question: ‘How did you feel?’ The gospel record almost seems flat and disappointing. But what mattered was what was done, not what was felt.

A marvellous miracle had occurred. Now what?

In Act 2 five very different conversations unfold, revealing that the man had not only been physically blind but also spiritually blind. The first conversation was with confused neighbors. ‘I am the man,’ he said. ‘The man Jesus healed me’ (9:8-12).

But signs of tension emerge with a second conversation. The Pharisees disputed the credentials of someone who had healed him on the Sabbath (9:13-17). No one from God would heal on the Sabbath; how could a sinner do such signs? ‘What do you think?’, they ask the man. ‘I think he’s the prophet,’ he responded.

In a third conversation the Pharisees spoke with the healed man’s parents. In response to their questioning, they insisted their son was born blind but could now see. Anyone who said the man who had healed him is the Christ, would be excommunicated, the Pharisees warned. ‘Don’t involve us,’ the parents said. ‘Ask our son. He is of age.’

And when the Pharisees spoke with the healed man, they aggressively observed that he had been born ‘in utter sin’. ‘Keep quiet and all will be well,’ they said. But the man wasn’t shaken. He knew that he was born blind and that now he can see. He was also beginning to see that these revered leaders were blind to the truth.

‘We know that God has spoken to Moses,’ they said, ‘but as for this man, we don’t know where he is from’. ‘You call Jesus a sinner,’ the man responded. ‘If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’

The fifth conversation is one of the most beautiful found in the Bible (9:35-37). The man has just been rejected by the religious leaders, but Jesus seeks him out. ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’, Jesus asks. And the man’s response is honest and open: ‘I would believe if…’ Jesus’ response is stunning: ‘You have seen him. With your own eyes you have seen me, the Son of Man, And now I am speaking to your mind and heart, reaching the depths of your soul with who I am.

‘Lord I believe,’ he responded. And he worshipped Jesus as though he were God.

There are few mountain peaks higher in John’s gospel. The man began by calling Jesus a man (9:11); then a prophet (9:17); and then, ‘this man must be from God’. Now he worships Jesus as Lord.

It’s a road that many people travel as they awaken to their understanding of Jesus: he did live; he is a prophet; he must be from God; He is God – He is my Lord.

But there is a Third Act as Jesus draws out the meaning (9:39-41). “For judgment I came into this world,” Jesus said, “so that those who do not see may see, and so that those who see may become blind”.

Whenever Jesus spoke, he created tension within people. This continues today, for every time we talk about Jesus, people will react in one of two ways. Some will want to find out more and in time, come into the light of faith. Others will choose to be drawn into the darkness of unbelief – a terrifying thought.

But there is a very positive side to the healing of the formerly blind man. Through the miracle Jesus performed, through his own testimony, and through the testimony of the healed man, John reveals that Jesus is truly the man from heaven.

Furthermore, the miracle is a parable. In the healing of the man born blind, God shows us his greater purpose: to give us spiritual sight – something he alone can do. We can’t get it by our own efforts. God opens eyes, drawing us to the truth and a living faith in the Lord Jesus.

A prayer. Almighty God, grant that we, who justly deserve to be punished for our sinful deeds, may in your mercy and kindness be pardoned and restored; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

© John G. Mason

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In his Pensées Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French mathematician and philosopher wrote, ‘Everyone seeks happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. They will never take the least step but to this object…’

John the Gospel writer tells us of a woman at a well in Samaria two thousand years ago who would have agreed.

Like us, she longed for happiness, but it had eluded her. Five failed marriages testified to that. Thinking that love and sex and marriage would give her life meaning and happiness, she thought that each new man would be the answer. But each time she made the same mistake. Her life was a mess. She felt insecure, lonely, and dissatisfied.

An unexpected conversation. But there came a day when her life was transformed through an unexpected conversation with a Jewish man.

Ignoring social, cultural and political taboos, Jesus initiated a conversation with her through a simple request for water from the well. He didn’t talk about her life or matters of faith – at least to begin with. Rather he spoke then, as he speaks to us today, with concern and respect, meeting us where we are.

However, it wasn’t long before he took the conversation to another level by speaking to her about living water. This provided a natural opportunity for her to open up about her hopes.

It happened this way. Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water” (John 4:12-15).

Jesus offered her water that would satisfy her deep inner spiritual thirst. He was saying that he is the answer to the emptiness and the longing for happiness that gnaw at our souls.

Most of us aren’t willing to acknowledge this and the woman that day was no exception. We pretend we’re doing well but the reality is that we often live closer to despairthan we admit. So, we endeavor to offset our sense of emptiness by filling our social calendar, making money, being a success, even pursuing sexual adventure. But it never works.

No matter how successful we are, no matter how intense the emotional relationships we might experience, nothing can be a substitute for the relationship with God for which we are made. But if we’re going to find Jesus’ answer to our longing for happiness, first we have to admit our need.

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet…”(John 4:16-19)

Suddenly she realized that Jesus, whom she had taken for a progressive Jewish man, was nothing less than a prophet with supernatural knowledge of her life. She knew enough about religion to realize that she was being challenged to sort out her relationship with God.

The big question was where to do this – the temple in Jerusalem, or a house of worship in Samaria? Jesus’s response is, in today’s world, politically incorrect: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:22-24).

Jesus isn’t saying that it doesn’t matter what you believe so long as you’re sincere. Spirit and truth are not just synonyms for sincerity. When Jesus speaks of truth, he is talking about the inner reality of God’s being which becomes visible to us through him.

True worshippers must worship the Father in spirit and truth. This can only relate to who Jesus is and what he has done for us. Later Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

The woman responded, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us”.Jesus’s response is breath-taking, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you” – literally, ‘I who am speaking to you, I am’ (John 4:26).

Twelve hundred years before, God had revealed his name to Moses: “I am that I am that is my name”. Jesus was not just claiming to be the Messiah but to be one with God.

The water that Jesus promised the woman that day would not just quench her thirst for real life but would bring her into a deep, satisfying and eternal friendship with the one true creator-redeemer God.

Four centuries later, Augustine, the Bishop of North Africa wrote, ‘Our souls are restless until they find their rest in Thee (God)’.

The eternal life that Jesus talks about, the water that will truly satisfy us, isn’t found in the acquisition of the latest phone or some new sexual experience. Indeed, the answer to our cry for happiness isn’t in a new religious experience. It involves a personal, mutually committed relationship with Jesus. Jesus is God in the flesh. He gives us life by giving us himself.

Consider what the woman did. Leaving her water jar… John records (4:28). The symbol of her emptiness now lies abandoned at Jesus’ feet. She had found the living water for she had found Him. Things would never be the same again.

There are tens of thousands of people like that woman, with empty lives. We don’t have to wait for anything special to happen to start a conversation with them. Rather, we need to be praying that God will open our eyes to opportunities to stimulate curiosity, awaken an awareness of need. It could even start with a question, ‘Have you ever read the real story about Jesus?’ followed by an invitation to look into the first eighteen sentences of that story over coffee (using TheWord121 – a very accessible annotated version of John’s Gospel).

A prayer. Almighty God, we confess that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: keep us outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, so that we may be defended from all adversities that may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

© John G. Mason

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In today’s world, God is not so much dead as cancelled. He is not to be spoken about. If he does exist, there’s nothing good to say about him: he is grim and uncaring.

How different this is from what the Bible actually says about God. Consider the most well- known words in the Bible: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

They occur in the context of a conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus, a Jewish leader who had come to see him late at night. Nicodemus was one of the thousands who had been impressed and he wanted to meet Jesus for a personal chat.

Jesus’ rise to stardom had happened very quickly and his popularity was enormous. He said the most amazing things and backed them up with the most extraordinary actions: he healed the sick, raised the dead to life, and overcame the powers of evil. No matter what confronted him, he was always in control. His person and presence had so great an impact that he is also mentioned by other historians of that era – such as Tacitus and Josephus.

God’s love. The Bible tells us that God’s essential nature is love. In Psalm 145:8-9 we read: The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.

The theme of the love of God permeates both the Old and New Testaments. What is more, we find that his love is not sparked by something attractive about us. God loves because love is at the very heart of his being.

Now it’s important to note that our English word ‘love’ translates four Greek words (the language in which the New Testament was written). One word is eros, from which we get our word erotic. It’s a word associated with intense emotional feeling. It’s a word that pagan religions have long used in part as a reference to the mystical experience of the supernatural. One form of yoga in Hinduism exploits sexual intercourse as a technique for achieving spiritual enlightenment.

But nowhere does the New Testament use the word eros. It uses a rare word in the original Greek: agape. There are no rapturous, mystical experiences associated with agape. Rather, agape is committed to serve the best interests of the ones who are loved.

Furthermore, John tells us, God so loved the world that he reaches out to all men and women. This is breath-taking. God could have shut humanity down at the moment of their rebellion. We deserved nothing less. But God in his love had a bigger and very costly plan in mind that would benefit a world that rejected him.

God’s gift. He gave us his Son…

John is not saying that God loved world enough to give his Son. Rather, it was out of God’s love for the world that he gave his Son.

These words are amongst the most famous in the Bible. Consider what they say about Jesus. He is ‘the one who came down from heaven, the one and only Son of God’ (John 1:14).

Being from God, the Son personally reveals to us what God is like. As Jesus says later, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). More than ever we need to hear him and respond to him.

But significantly, God didn’t give his Son just to shine his light into a dark and troubled world. God so loved the world that he gave his Son to rescue it. The gift would come to its climax and fulfillment when the Son was crucified.

t was with Jesus’ death that we discover the immeasurable depth of God’s love. For it was through Jesus’ voluntary, sacrificial death that God opened the door once and for all whereby he could forgive men and women who had shown no love for him.

God’s offer. John tells us of the offer that God holds out: Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Eternal life is contrasted with perishing. John doesn’t tell us what perishing is but he does tell us that it will be a most unwelcome experience. Elsewhere we learn, mainly through Jesus’ own teaching, that it is a very serious thing to refuse God’s gift. Perishing won’t mean perpetually partying with friends. Everything that is good, beautiful, and true will be lost. T.S. Elliot put it this way, Hell is oneself. Hell is alone…

Life eternal will be a life of perfection and beauty, where there will be no more pain or suffering, self-absorption or injustice. It will be fullness of joy in the glory of the Lord.

God’s beneficiaries. John tells us who will benefit: Whoever believes in the Son… We can’t achieve eternal life by our own efforts or merits. We are totally dependent on God’s generous gift. To turn to Jesus, the Son of God and to trust him, is the key to our benefiting from God’s precious gift.

In our natural state we don’t want to accept God’s offer because we know it would mean a radical lifestyle change. And we don’t want to change. We would rather stay in the dark than move into the light and admit what we are really like.

I’ve wondered how long the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus recorded in John chapter 3, lasted. Nicodemus had arrived late at night. Could it be that as he left there were the first glimmerings of dawn on the horizon? And as he saw the rising sun, did he smile with joy at the dawn of a new day, or did he turn his eyes back upon the darkness of the night?

This is the choice that confronts you and me, and indeed the world.

A prayer. Almighty God, we ask you to look on the heartfelt desires of your servants, and stretch forth the right hand of your power to be our defense against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

© John G. Mason

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