Hold the roof up

Jo Penn May 18, 2023 3 2

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1 Corinthians 16: 19 (NRSVA)

19 The churches of Asia send greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, greet you warmly in the Lord.

Priscilla offers her home as a place for prayer, worship, teaching, and sharing food. A space to negotiate through the beginning phases of forming a new church. She uses the house, that she has been blessed with by God, to offer physical space and a trusting environment as a group of people come together to follow the Jesus way. A venture with a frisson of risk to be a part of something new.

I imagine competing personalities, learning from each other, and learning to live with each other; a space for worship, prayer and discovering the gift of the Holy Spirit; discussion of deep issues of faith, applying the lens of the life of Jesus to the Old Testament writings; and living the realities of life together as a community based on friendship: sickness, death, weddings, business ventures, disappointments….

At Scargill, where I live and work, the House Team take much care in preparing bedrooms and communal spaces to welcome guests: hoovering, dusting, polishing, making beds with freshly laundered bed linen, and placing colour co-ordinated towels. Rooms lovingly prepared to provide a restful environment for the guest’s stay.

Guests are prayed for by name by the whole community. As a motley group of people, we cannot ‘fix’ the things that our guests struggle with in their life, but we desire to curate a space where God can move freely to meet each guest at their point of need, to be the pillars to hold the roof up over this holy space by taking care with all aspects of their stay with us.

A prayer for preparing God’s house:

Thank you, God, for entrusting this home to us.

May you use it to bless and strengthen all who come through its doors.

May it offer a generous hospitality.

Holy Spirit,

Sweep through its rooms.

Wash resentments away.

Inspire Godly dreams and ideas.

Jesus,

Teach us how to live,

Give us daily bread.

Build Your Kingdom here.