I am writing this in January when Woolton is decked in snow and my daughter Katy has just sent me a text from Newcastle saying she has had enough of the cold and is longing to bask in some sunshine!

That sent me on a line of thought about the treatment given in the past to sufferers of tuberculosis. They were put out in the sunlight and fresh air. The patients didn’t have to do anything; the sun effected the cure.

Prayer is just as simple. 

We are all saturated with the virus of sin, not to mention all sorts of stresses and strains and when we pray it is like taking a sun cure. To be a Christian is to be given a ‘place in the sun’.

Jesus says, ‘I am standing at the door and knocking and if anyone hears my call and opens the door I will come in.’ (Revelation 3.20)

This verse helps us to understand prayer. Prayer is allowing Jesus into our lives. The verse also shows us that he is the one making the first move. He is longing to meet us, hence him knocking.

Anthony Bloom tells the story of an elderly woman who had been working at prayer with all her might but without ever sensing God’s presence. Wisely the archbishop encouraged the woman to go to her room each day and “for fifteen minutes knit before the face of God, but I forbid you to say one word of prayer. You must just knit and enjoy the peace of the room.”

The woman received this counsel and at first her only thought was, “Oh how nice, I have fifteen minutes in which I can do nothing without feeling guilty!” In time however she began to enter the silence created by her own knitting. Soon she said, “I perceived that this silence was not just simply the absence of noise, but that the silence had substance. It was not the absence of something, but the presence of something.” As she continued her daily knitting she discovered that “at the heart of the silence there was he who is all stillness, all peace, all poise.” She had let go of her tight-fisted efforts to enter God’s presence and, by doing so, discovered God’s presence already there.

In our busy lives, prayer brings with God’s presence an inner stillness, calm and perspective. Prayer, it has been said, “moves the hand that moves the world. “God does answer prayer.

This is a way of introducing the fact that for most of our evening services in the build up to and during Lent, we are learning about prayer. Lent is a time of the Christian discipline of fasting from sin and feasting on God. May I invite you to the feast of encountering the God of love.

Soon, the rumour will be out – Woolton is full of sun bathers!