Following on from our focus on the theme of ‘Encounter’ last term, Bishop Patrick has asked us to reflect on the theme of Discipleship during the Lent Term. He said:
‘because of that personal encounter with Christ, I would like to encourage each of us to hear and respond to his invitation to be his DISCIPLES, to follow him more closely, and to seek to serve him generously in our daily lives.’
By reflecting on the example of Jesus’ disciples, who ’left everything, and followed him’ we too are called to dedicate our lives to Jesus by answering our call to discipleship.
This links in really well with this week’s word: inspire. When you inspire someone, you make them do something because of what they have seen you do or heard you say. For example, you might be inspired to start playing a sport because you have seen someone playing it on TV or a friend might recommend it to you.
In today’s reading, we heard how the first disciples were called.
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke
Glory to you O Lord
One day Jesus was standing on the shore of Lake Gennesaret while the people pushed their way up to him to listen to the word of God. He saw two boats pulled up on the beach; the fishermen had left them and were washing the nets. Jesus got into one of the boats—it belonged to Simon—and asked him to push off a little from the shore. Jesus sat in the boat and taught the crowd.
When he finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Push the boat out further to the deep water, and you and your partners let down your nets for a catch.”
“Master,” Simon answered, “we worked hard all night long and caught nothing. But if you say so, I will let down the nets.” They let them down and caught such a large number of fish that the nets were about to break. So they motioned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats so full of fish that the boats were about to sink. When Simon Peter saw what had happened, he fell on his knees before Jesus and said, “Go away from me, Lord! I am a sinful man!”
He and the others with him were all amazed at the large number of fish they had caught. The same was true of Simon’s partners, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
They pulled the boats up on the beach, left everything, and followed Jesus.
The Gospel of the Lord
Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ
The deep waters that Peter was asked to take his boat out to, can relate to when we are pushed out of our comfort zone. When we are asked to do something that we think we cannot do, we should listen to Jesus and maybe, as in the case of Peter when he caught a hoard of fish bigger than in his wildest dreams, we will be more successful than we could ever imagine.
Your mission leads on from this as we should be inspired by the teachings of Jesus in order to inspire others to live a life in line with his teachings. Your mission is to inspire others to live a better life.
- Maybe you could inspire someone to walk to school or to recycle more to help protect God’s creation
- Maybe you could inspire someone to join you at Church on Sundays
- Maybe you could ask a friend to join you in prayer at the prayer area in the corridor in order to spend time with God
- Maybe you could inspire someone to have faith when they are struggling with their work in class that God knows they can do it and to keep trying
To help us with our mission, the chaplaincy team wrote some prayers which they read out to us.
Let us know in the comments below how you have met this week’s mission.
4 comments
Year 5 had plenty of ideas for this week’s mission as we have been learning about Bishop Patrick and the visions that he has for the Nottingham Diocese. We spoke about his three missions: Encounter, Discipleship and Missionary Discipleship and how we could live out these visions in our everyday lives. We spoke about inspiring people to take more time to pray to God as this will bring them closer to him and show that God loves each and every one of us. We spoke about what we could do to become disciples of God and they came up with ideas such as helping those in need, forgiving others for their wrong-doings and taking care of our friends and families when they need our support.
In Year 4 we have been talking about how we can be disciples, inspiring others and living out St Paul’s letter from Romans 12:8-11. We said that we should do our work to the best of our ability at all times and inspire those around us to do the same. That we should be real in our love for each other and treat all of our friends and those in the class with the same love and care so to inspire them to do the same for us. We said that we should pray regularly to ask forgiveness, say thank you and talk to God about our concerns and worries. We can tell people about this and hope to inspire them to do the same.
In Year 1, we talked about how we can find inspiration in our everyday life. The children suggested praying and walking in Jesus’ footsteps. We went for a hunt around our classroom to look for things that could inspire us and a child pointed to the bible and said the bible could inspire us to know more about God. We concluded our liturgy by praying and promising to be kind to our friends.
In Year 3 the children were able to say how Jesus inspires them through his behaviour in the Gospel stories. They gave examples of staff at school who inspired them in their learning in certain topics because they made them exciting and enjoyable. They were able to talk about people that inspire them in their lives like their parents, celebrities, famous artists etc as they look up to them and want to be like them. They also spoke about the fact that we can learn a lot from bible stories because there are lots of people that inspire us in them, plus people like St.Clare and Mother Theresa who lived their lives helping others because of their strong faith.