Prayer for the Day

by Revd Canon David White

1st June 2025 - 7th Sunday of Easter

When we stand gazing upwards, bring us down to earth:
with the love of a friend, through the songs of the sorrowing,
in the faces of the hungry.
When we look to you for action, demand some work from us:
by your touch of fire, your glance of reproof,
your fearful longing.
As ruler over all: love us into action,
fire us with your zeal, enrich us with your grace,
to make us willing subjects of your rule. Amen.

The first three lines of this prayer resonate with the words spoken by the “two men in white” (angels?) who suddenly appear to the apostles immediately after Jesus has ascended. (See Acts 1.1-11.) The men ask, “why do you stand looking up towards heaven…?” With these words the apostles are brought down to earth, just as this prayer asks God to do for us when we have that tendency to be, as the saying goes, so heavenly minded that we are no earthly use.

The point of the Ascension for the apostles and for the Church is not that Jesus has gone away, left the apostles and his friends for good, but rather that he has actually moved into the nearer presence of God in order to be closer to them and to us, and to be with us, for all time. This must have been difficult for the writers of the gospels to convey so they describe Jesus as being “lifted up” by a cloud. As this prayer suggests, there are countless different ways for us to meet and encounter Jesus and our task is to discover these ways as we live out each day.