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    Scots Worship: Advent, Christmas & Epiphany
    Scots Worship: Advent, Christmas & Epiphany
    Scots Worship: Advent, Christmas & Epiphany
    Ebook240 pages1 hour

    Scots Worship: Advent, Christmas & Epiphany

    By David Ogston

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    About this ebook

    Following the success of Scots Worship - Lent, Holy Week & Easter, this new resource from David Ogston is for use during Advent, Christmas and Epiphany.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSaint Andrew Press
    Release dateFeb 17, 2015
    ISBN9780861538577
    Scots Worship: Advent, Christmas & Epiphany

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      Book preview

      Scots Worship - David Ogston

      First published in 2014 by

      SAINT ANDREW PRESS

      121 George Street

      Edinburgh EH2 4YN

      Copyright © David Ogston

      ISBN 978 0 86153 854 6

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent.

      David Ogston has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      It is the publisher’s policy to only use papers that are natural and recyclable and that have been manufactured from timber grown in renewable, properly managed forests. All of the manufacturing processes of the papers are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

      Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London

      Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by

      Ashford Colour Press, Gosport, Hants

      Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Foreword

      Preface

      Refractions of Jesus

      Tinker

      Tailor

      Soldier

      Spy

      The Three Advents

      A Scots meditation for the Advent season

      Advent Psalms

      A broadcast meditation

      For the Sizzen o’ Advent

      A Scots Advent prayer

      God Beyond Us and Beside Us

      An Advent prayer

      Away with Gloom

      An Advent prayer

      Seeking Blessings

      Advent intercessions

      The Advent Plainstanes

      A paving stone for each day during Advent

      Baptized by John

      A meditation for the third Sunday in Advent

      The Four Candles

      A meditation for Christmas Eve

      Hark! The Glad Sound

      A prayer for Christmas Eve

      The Vigil

      A conversation in verse for Christmas Eve

      If on a Winter’s Night

      A Christmas Eve dialogue

      The Isaiah Dream

      A meditation for Christmas Eve

      The Storyteller

      The shepherds go to the manger

      The Old, Old Story

      Christmas worship

      Welcome the Christ Child

      An act of worship for Christmastide

      The Perfume of Promise

      A meditation for Christmas

      Cry Glory

      A Scots prayer for Christmas Day

      Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

      An act of worship for Christmas Day

      Bairnie Jesus

      A Scots song for the Christ child

      No-one Unchanged

      A Christmas Communion prayer

      The Cost of It All

      A Christmas poem

      The Secret is Jesus

      A Christmas prayer

      The Door is Open

      A prayer for Christmas Day

      Enter Now, King Jesus

      A prayer for the New Year

      As Yet Unspoiled

      A prayer for the New Year

      Send Us a Star

      An Epiphany prayer

      The Morning Star

      An Epiphany prayer

      That is Why We Kneel

      An Epiphany prayer

      The Gifts of the Magi

      A meditation for Epiphany

      God Our Sunrise

      A Communion liturgy for Epiphany

      Let Us Build a House

      A Communion liturgy

      The Triumph-Song of Earth and Heaven

      A Communion liturgy

      Forge, Plate, Field and Grape

      A Communion liturgy

      A Doric Holy Communion

      An order for Holy Communion in Scots

      We Remember Him

      A Communion prayer

      Amazing Grace

      A Communion prayer

      Dews of Praise

      A Communion prayer

      So Let It Be

      A Communion prayer

      The Gods God Banishes

      A meditation

      The Road God Takes

      A meditation for three voices

      Amen

      A meditation

      A Quarry of Prayers

      The Voice of Glory

      About prayers

      Lord, Graciously Hear Us

      Lord, We Thank You

      A thanksgiving prayer

      Thanks Be to God

      A thanksgiving prayer

      Blessing and Honour

      A prayer

      Mystery Glimpsed

      A prayer for worship

      Known Through and Through

      An uncomfortable prayer

      A Simple Prayer

      A prayer

      Good Samaritan People

      A prayer prompted by the parable

      Blessed Are You

      A prayer

      Let Us Pray to the Lord

      A prayer for peace

      In These Our Days

      A prayer in a time of tension

      Lord of Heaven and Earth

      A prayer for forgiveness

      I Will Take the Cup of Salvation

      A prayer before Communion

      Help of the Helpless

      A prayer of intercession

      Travelling Under Authority

      A prayer

      Stretch Out Your Strong Hand

      A prayer for remembrance

      His Redeemed

      A prayer for ourselves

      Lord, Have Mercy

      A prayer

      At the Name of Jesus

      A prayer

      This is the Day

      A prayer

      The Bereft

      A prayer for remembrance

      Daring to Touch his Head

      A prayer

      Where God is this Morning

      A prayer

      God Bless the Dream

      A prayer

      Unclouded Vision

      A prayer

      Love That Will Not Let Us Go

      A prayer

      Counting Blessings

      A prayer

      For Forgiveness

      A prayer

      Searched and Known

      A prayer

      Not Enough Time

      A prayer

      Light and Life

      A prayer

      Travelling Light

      A prayer

      God Most Near

      A prayer

      A Feast of Grace

      Themed Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Thanks are due to the Guildry Incorporation of Perth and to the Drummond, Forteviot and Jimmie Cairncross Charitable Trusts for assistance with the publication of this volume; to Moira McGregor, who prepared the typescript largely from David Ogston’s handwritten material; and to Ann Crawford of Hymns Ancient and Modern for her professional expertise.

      Thanks are due to Carcanet Press Limited for permission to quote from ‘Idleness’ in Collected Poems of Andrew Young. Thanks are also due to my friends Ruth Wishart and Andrew McLellan for immediately agreeing to allow anything they had written to be used.

      I must also thank my wife Evelyn, to whom I turned too often to rescue the text of this book from some extremely foolish mistakes which threatened to send the electronic file irretrievably into the ether.

      Johnston McKay

      Acknowledgements

      Shaping this book has been undertaken by Johnston McKay. Johnston and David worked together as assistant ministers with Dr Harry Whitley in St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh at the start of their ministries. I am indebted to Johnston who first suggested David’s work and has kept the dream of the book alive for me.

      Meg Ogston

      Foreword

      This collection is no superficial work. On every page there is profound and insightful thought. These prayers and meditations drill deep into the meaning of the Christian faith and from the first page they deal with the human condition the way it really is. The man behind these words was complex and compassionate so it is no surprise that these characteristics are evident on every page. When I read it for the first time I could hear David’s voice, I could feel him wrestling with God and I know that those who dip into this collection will be inspired by it. This should be compulsory reading for those of us who climb pulpit steps; it challenges us to dig deeper and to spend more of our own time wrestling with God.

      The Right Reverend John Chalmers

      Preface

      David Ogston, who died in 2008, was my friend. More importantly, he was someone who took worship, and the preparation of worship, so seriously that he once wrote about the painful experience of sitting up late on a Saturday night with the paper still blank. I suspect also that the wastepaper bin was filled with rejected drafts because David was scrupulously critical of his own work, which is why it was so powerful. He also once asked in a house journal for ministers, ‘Who has not found that a good prayer can take as long to prepare as a sermon?’

      His views, I suspect, make him an unlikely role model for the contemporary minister. Not too long ago, I was asked to talk to some young ministers about the preparation for and conduct of worship. They made it abundantly clear to me that devoting time to what happened on a Sunday morning did not occupy a very high place in their list of priorities. If not a role model, however, David may well be a vitally important resource for those who believe that they have more important things to do than prepare for Sunday morning, and also for the increasing number of lay people who are finding themselves called upon to lead worship in their own and other congregations.

      David loved Advent and Christmas – the colour, the imagery, the extravagance – and he loved conducting worship. These loves shine through his sermons, prayers and meditations for the season. The first part of this book contains some of that material; the second contains some of what he prepared for what ministers sometimes describe as ‘ordinary Sundays’. But, for David, no Sunday was ‘ordinary’. Each one demanded from him all his creativity and vivid use of language. David could also be unnecessarily hard on himself, as he shows in the three meditations ‘A Feast of Grace’, in which he reflects on 25 years of ministry.

      It has been a privilege to edit this book and to dedicate it, as David most certainly would have wanted, to Meg and to their daughters Katie and Ruth.

      Johnston McKay

      November 2013

      Refractions of Jesus

      Tinker

      These Advent reflections are about the images of Christ that live in us and find expression in human terms. Christ in us, the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. As you can guess, we are not looking at perfection or for perfection. We are looking at ourselves. But, in current jargon, we are looking not at cheap cut-price versions of the real thing, but at the real thing as we achieve it. As Gerard Manley Hopkins put it: it is natural, since

      the just man justices;

      keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces,

      acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –

      Christ.

      For Christ plays in ten

      thousand places,

      lovely in limbs,

      and lovely in eyes

      not his

      to the Father through the features

      of men’s faces.

      Christ … through the features of men’s faces – and of women’s faces

      When He shared a final meal with the 12 men who had stuck close to Him, just before His arrest, Christ picked up a slab of dry and brittle bread – He snapped it cleanly into little pieces and let the pieces fall. Then He handed to the nearest man a new piece of brittle bread, and He said, ‘This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ Do what? Receive it? Consume it? No. Break it. Break it in remembrance of Him. He was teaching them, not how to take, but how to give. They too were to be slabs of brittle bread. They too were to be broken.

      That is the only way that the Lord’s Table can remain to be for us a new dynamic. If all we learn there is the way to take, then all we learn there is the way to stand still. But, to this day, there is truly something sacramental in the giving of bread. Primo Levi writes how, during his imprisonment in Auschwitz, he met a man who, literally, saved him from not only hunger but something worse, from despair at humanity. We have to remember that, in Auschwitz, in the conditions of near-starvation and continuous hunger, bread was all-powerful: it filled the prisoners’ fantasies, it was their currency and their wealth. The man was called Lorenzo, and Primo Levi describes how Lorenzo brought him a piece of bread and some of his rations each day for six months. He gave him a vest to help keep out the cold. Primo Levi believed that he survived because of Lorenzo – not only because of the food and other practical help that he provided but also and, more importantly, because, through his straightforward goodness, he helped Levi to hold on to a belief that a world beyond terror, hatred and cruelty remained and that the possibility of goodness still existed.

      When I was a divinity student, my professors told me: do not

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