Diocesan Prayer Fellowship

Dubai, Sharjah and
the Northern Emirates

23rd September, 2007
Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

Saturday:  Michael and All Angels

Personal religious experiences are difficult to share with others.  Testimonies to strangers can be occasions of embarrassment unless communicated within a context of trust and understanding.  Nevertheless the ministry of angels is well documentein the history of the Church, and clergy are humbled in the recounting of parishioners' stories of the spiritual guidance of the angels.  The vivid description of the appearance of a comforting "Golden Angel" in the bedfroom of a Cockney man the very night that his child died a cot death was an indelible memory of my own ministry in the East End of London.  "In the beginning was the Word".... which just has to be communicated, for the God of love is continually revealing himself to us:  In Jesus Christ 'the word made flesh"' in the Divine word of Holy Scripture; but also in the ministry of angels who are God's messengers.  In communicating our faith to others we share an angelic ministry.  "Take my lips and let them be, filled with messages of Thee".  In each Christian community we entertain angels both divine and human, often unaware.

Please pray for the churches and people of our Chaplaincy: Holy Trinity, Dubai; Christ Church, Jebel Ali; St. Martin's, Sharjah and St. Luke's, Ras al Khaimah; and for the new ministry of the Mission to Seafarers boat, aptly called "The Angel" bring the Good News to the huge anchorage of ships off Fujeirah in the Indian Ocean.  Pray for our Mission 1010 and our ecumenical outreach in social action: to the poor migrant workers in our community; in Health Care, Advocacy, and in prison visiting.  Join us:  in thanksgiving for those Muslim Rulers in the Emirates whose generosity is enabling us to build two new Churches in Sharjah and in Ras al Khaimah; in our prayers for peace in the lands of Abraham.  Rejoice in the new churches and new languages on our compounds who with the thousands who worship with us join "with angels and archangels ever praising God and saying, Holy, Holy, Holy....."