Do we think of prayer as time spent quietly with hands held together, asking, waiting and listening. Our readings today tell us it goes much further than that.
In the part of the Sermon on the Mount we hear this weekend Jesus exhorts his disciples to put his teachings into action. The first challenge, to be the salt of the earth, involves improving the lives of those around us. Just as salt enhances food, making it worth having, how do we make life better for those in our lives? In doing so we are to meet the second challenge, to be the light of the world. It is important that our lives are visibly lived out in faith drawing others to the light of the Gospel.
Our First and Second readings support and flesh out the call of the Gospel. St Paul calls on the community in Corinth to remember that the good they do comes from the power of the Holy Spirit working through them. Isaiah fleshes out what it means to make people’s lives better and where our focus should be. We can see them as two sides of the same coin. One is with prayerful hands joined together reflecting on where we get our strength; the other with open, giving, equally prayerful hands doing the work God calls us to do.