I’ve worked twenty years as a professional mediator. Whilst my call is to prayer and nurturing faith, this provided my income for a long time. Mediation (working with people to resolve real conflict) requires a lot of active listening. In this context the word ‘listen’ means to hear, heed and obey; three actions.

In both Old and New Testaments an encounter with God led to change. Here, the frightened, despondent disciples found a confidence and courage in God to describe the source of their faith. Over the years, the Church seems slowly to have lost its confidence and courage. It tends to answer questions no-one’s asking. Very different from that first Pentecost!

Pentecost celebrates the birth of the Church. The angel told the disciples to gather in Jerusalem and there to wait and pray. After nine days the Holy Spirit hovered over them and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

Scripture records events that can appear quite strange. They lie outside our normal, everyday experiences. Here, Daniel is greeted by the Angel Gabriel – the same angel who carried the news to Mary that she was to be the mother of Jesus.

In lockdown I discovered the wonder of Zoom. Through Christmas, Waverley Abbey Resources held Evening Prayer sessions on Zoom. It was wonderful as people participated from all around the world.

Reminding God to listen to our prayer requests is more a question of reassuring ourselves, because God has invited us to pray and promised to receive and respond. Yet, there’s often a certain uncertainty within the human heart that God actually listens to our prayers.

We live in a world swamped with multiple 24/7 news feeds. That news is seldom good, or useful. What am I to do in the face of a severe earthquake or unprovoked attack on innocents? Information that I cannot process effectively and respond to with constructive action appears to me of little real value. I can empathise, but such empathy offers little comfort to the sufferer.

Daniel 9:13–14 ‘Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come on us, yet we have not sought the favour of the LORD our God by turning from our sins and giving attention to your truth.’ (v13)

It is a wonder my parents were capable of extending love towards me given my own love of disobedience and lying as a child. Only as I became a parent, adopted by a seven year old who was in our community, did I discover that a parent’s love never releases the object of its love.

Shame makes us feel uncomfortable. It speaks to all those actions and inner thoughts that we want to keep secret. It’s about our sense of guilt and dishonour, feelings we recognise but too often choose to ignore. It causes confusion and often causes us to blush, an outward sign of inner discomfort.