Welcome to the 'Out of the Ordinary' message board.

We invite you to use it to share your experiences, impressions, reflections, responses and prayers with others.

In the same way, photos, sketches and graphics can be uploaded and viewed here.

How was it for you? Here is a quick recap on the questions we asked you to mull over:

How did you find the experience?
How did you feel before going, while you were in the places and afterwards?
Have you shared your experiences with anyone else?
How and why did you choose your particular places?
How did praying 'in' the situation make a difference to your understanding of prayer and to your understanding of the situation itself?
What did you 'notice' (see, hear or realise) for the first time?

Feel free to comment on any post below, or start your own post by clicking here: Write a post

Wed 12 Apr 2006

A place of celebration and hope

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Read: Mark 16:1-8 A place of celebration and hope

Three women come to the tomb to grieve the death of Jesus and instead meet him as the risen Lord.

The women arrive at the tomb expecting to anoint a corpse. Instead they meet an angel with a countenance like lightning and encounter the resurrected Christ. From a place of numbness and defeat they are given a new word of life and sent to tell the disciples that the Jesus they saw executed ‘has been raised from the dead.’

The place of celebration is a place of faith and doubt. We don’t expect life out of death, we don’t expect hope to spring from despair and we don’t expect the risen Lord to meet us. When it happens we are filled with ‘fear and great joy.’ Where God acts in the world we are on holy ground and all we can do is celebrate and praise and be filled with humility.

Suggestions: Identify places, people and redemptive work that invoke in you a spirit of praise and thanksgiving. It could be a faith community, an inner city youth programme, a person who serves the poor or a place that holds a salvation memory for you. Go to that place and prayerfully celebrate the sign of the risen Lord in that place.

Pray: What is your prayer in this place of hope and celebration?
Reflect: What is there to amaze and frighten in this place?
Act: What can you say or do to share your experiences in this place of celebration and hope?

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Wed 5 Apr 2006

An empty space

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Read: Luke 23:50-56An empty space

A friend of Jesus lays his lifeless body in the garden tomb and the world waits.

In the aftermath of Christ’s death the disillusioned disciples have scattered. Their world has become empty of meaning. The promises of their Lord appear to have come to nothing but death. His friends do the only thing they can, they observe the customs of burial and on the Sabbath they rest.

Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday the biblical text is virtually silent. In the silence of that Jewish Sabbath nothing seems to happen. In the empty space there is nothing to do but wait. Some disciples waited in fear and despair, others in grief. Were some, like Joseph of Arimathea, still ‘expectantly’ waiting for the Kingdom of God? Holy Saturday is a symbol of an empty time and place and an invitation to prayerful anticipation.

Suggestions: Reflect on places that seem empty, situations and people that have had meaning taken away from them, places of hurt and despair. It could be waste ground, a ‘peace’ wall, a derelict house, a community that has lost hope, a person made numb through grief. With prayerful expectation, go and be physically present and wait to see signs of the Kingdom of God there.

Pray: What is your prayer in this empty space?
Reflect: What previously occupied this place and what might occupy it in the future?
Act: Does your life require more empty space?

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Wed 29 Mar 2006

A place of loss

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Read: Luke 23:44-46

The darkness of death fills the land and Jesus surrenders his life to God.

Despite the terrible signs of abusive power conveyed in the imagery of the crucifixion, the gospel writer wants us to know that Jesus voluntarily embraced his own death. However, this surrender of Christ’s life is not a stoical acceptance of defeat but an act of profound trust in the God of life, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’

Our culture copes with the reality of death and loss through denial. We deny death because we no longer have the ability to attribute meaning to it. Where there are no eternal perspectives to shape our lives, death makes no sense. But Christ’s trust in the eternal God transforms the oblivion of death itself. His resurrection proclaims that death will not have the final word.

Suggestion: Consider how the reality of loss has touched your life. It could be the end of a job, a relationship, a hope or a dream. What place could you go to and be prayerfully present to the grief and disappointment of that ending? Hold it before God. Or it could be a physical death of a loved one or a stranger, someone killed in the ‘Troubles’ or a recent death in the community. Go to a place that symbolises that loss and listen to the God of life.

Pray: What is your prayer in this place of loss?
Reflect: What hurts and fears have you faced in this place?
Act: Can you support those who live in a place of death?

Read the postcard

 

Wed 22 Mar 2006

A place you avoid

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Read: Matthew 26:6-13A place you avoid

Jesus is at home with a social outcast and receives a blessing from an unacceptable person.

This is a place Jesus should have avoided. For a host of religious reasons it was unlawful for a ‘rabbi’ to be eating at the ‘unclean’ table of a leper. Equally scandalous, Jesus allows a woman to anoint him with oil defying, as he often did, the rituals and codes of restriction between men and women. The woman anticipates Christ’s death in a way the disciples do not.

The startling truth of the Gospels is that Jesus sits at the table of the world with all its brokenness before he sits at the table of the Church. He is often in the ‘wrong’ place and in the company of ‘dubious’ people. His example in this story suggests that by living in the false safety of avoidance we might miss events that have ‘eternal’ significance.

Suggestion: Consider places and people you know about but don’t know. Places and people you have never thought of engaging with. It could be the local betting shop, a pub you pass every day, a housing estate or a community organisation you wouldn’t dream of going into. Go to a place you would normally avoid and prayerfully be present and see what happens.

Pray: What is your prayer in this place you have been avoiding?
Reflect: What has surprised you in this place?
Act: Will you change your attitude to the people and places you avoid?

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Wed 15 Mar 2006

A place of division and conflict

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Read: Luke 9:51-56

A place of division and conflict

In a conflict rooted in cultural and religious difference the disciples believe God is on their side.

The hostility between Jews and Samaritans was so ‘traditional’. Their shared history of hurt had hardened into uncompromising enmity. Given this legacy, the disciples and villagers behave in totally predictable ways. Each community stands defiant in the conviction that it is ‘right and good’ while the other is ‘wrong and bad’.

In our conflicts we can share with the disciples a ‘self-righteousness’ that is convinced that God is on our side. With religious sincerity we can even invoke the flames of God’s judgment on our enemies. Jesus challenges us to think about the ‘spirit’ behind this attitude.

Suggestion: Go to a place that symbolises personal or community conflict and prayerfully hold the hurt of that brokenness before God and listen. Reflect on the broken relationships that touch your life. Consider how the hurt you have experienced or the fear of difference has created division for you. What hurt or divisons might you have had a hand in creating?

Pray: What is your prayer in this place of division and conflict?
Reflect: What has challenged you most deeply in this place?
Act: Is there something you can bring to a situation of division and conflict?

Read the postcard

 

Wed 8 Mar 2006

A place of deprivation and poverty

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Read: Mark 5:25-34A place of deprivation and poverty

Jesus restores the dignity of a person who has become invisible to everyone else.

Jesus the teacher and miracle worker attracted crowds wherever he went. On this day he is stopped in his tracks by someone touching him. We are not told her name; only what she has suffered. This woman has been made an outcast because of her condition and has been reduced to a life of poverty and despair. Called out from the crowd by Jesus, she can no longer hide. All eyes are on her as she publicly tells her story. Significantly, Jesus affirms her as a daughter of God. Her shame is lifted from her: she can finally go in peace.

Every human being is created in the image and likeness of God. No one is ‘just a statistic’ in God’s eyes. There are many people or groups whom we exclude or have no contact with, whether unwittingly or intentionally. Often we only acknowledge them when talking about ‘them’. Although we don’t really know them, our judgments may be based on little more than myth, gossip or stereotypes.

Suggestion: Prayerfully spend some time in a place which speaks to you of poverty and deprivation. If possible, spend time with someone who is socially excluded or stigmatised, someone who is disadvantaged because of their social, economic or ethnic ‘difference’.

Pray: What is your prayer in this place of deprivation and poverty?
Reflect: What depresses you and inspires you in this place?
Act: Can you do anything practical to deal with deprivation and poverty?

Read the postcard

 

Wed 1 Mar 2006

An ordinary place

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Read: John 4:1-30An ordinary place

A Samaritan woman comes to a well to draw water and leaves having met with the Christ.

At first it is not the promised Messiah she encounters, just a Jewish man, who asks for a drink from the well. He is the one out of place here, upsetting social conventions, speaking in riddles, addressing her as though he knows her deepest thoughts, things she herself isn’t even aware of. Startled at first, she is filled with wonder as she hears God’s word to her. The household can wait for their water – she has seen the Messiah!

God is present in our world. We can meet God in our daily lives, even in the midst of the most mundane tasks. Everyday places can become opportunities for ‘sacred’ experiences. It is in the ordinariness of life that we least expect to encounter God, yet this is the very place where the power and presence of God can transform us.

Suggestion: Spend some time in prayerful reflection in a place that is part of your daily life such as your workplace or home, the bus, supermarket or community centre, school or college, a doctor’s waiting room. Take time to reflect on the people and situations you see around you.

Pray: What is your prayer in this ordinary place?
Reflect: What have you noticed for the first time in this place?
Act: How does this experience change your attitude to the ordinary?

Read the postcard