Parish Prayer Diary

A Resource for all Norbury members

Prayer on a regular basis is at the heart of our activity as Christians. It is part of the means by which we consciously remain in contact with God. We use it to praise him, to express regret for the various ways in which we have failed to live up to our Christian ideal, and to share with him our concerns for others as well as for ourselves. There will be all sorts of ways in which we individually structure our prayers but most of us welcome new ideas and resources to assist us in that task.

From the start of December we are making available a Prayer Diary, which you can take home from church, and use in your prayers. It is based on a similar one that John Bennett has supplied, which he brought from the parish of Corbridge in Northumberland. We are very grateful to John and to that parish for the example, which we have been able to adopt for ourselves.

The Diary consists of a day by day series of topics for use in prayer. The series lasts a month, so at the end of the month we can go back to day 1 and restart the sequence. Each day has three sections headed The Church’s Local Ministry, Community and Wider Church Issues, and People of our Parish. Under each heading there is a list of points which could be included in our prayers. The first two parts work through many of the activities, people and other matters that you might expect to find under those headings. The third section consists of a list of the roads of the parish so that, in the course of a month, everyone who lives in the parish can be included in our prayers.

Please take one, use it freely as a help but by no means a prescription for your prayers; and do please let me know if there are items which you feel have been omitted that should be there or if there is any other way in which we could improve it. The current edition will certainly run for at least a year before we do that, giving plenty of time for your feedback and ideas. We hope you find it useful.

Alan Brown