Pray for courage to embody Love

Morning: Psalm 119:1-24; Jeremiah 37:3-21; I Corinthians 14:13-25

Evening: Psalms 12, 13, 14; Matthew 10:24-33

Jesus warns his disciples they can expect harsh treatment.  He embodied Love and yet was crucified.  I wonder … will I take courage to embody Love too and admit that I am Jesus’ disciple?  Near my mother’s home in north Wales is tiny St. Trillo’s chapel, built in the 500s over a holy well, now of stone, originally probably of wood.  Though it is the smallest church in Britain, it stands for the great truth of enduring Love.  I will pray, when I visit there this week, for enduring courage to embody Love in my actions and words.

As sheep in the midst of wolves, but not alone

Morning: Psalms 5, 6; Jeremiah 36:27-37:2; I Corinthians 14:1-12

Evening: Psalms 10,11; Matthew 10:16-23

It’s not a happy metaphor … Sheep don’t stand a chance with wolves, yet Jesus still sends his disciples out!  He knows that as they speak for him and serve his purposes they will meet with resistance, even violence, but he commissions them anyway.  Good purposes seldom go unopposed.  In his own suffering Jesus faces down and overcomes the power of death, whose most active energy is fear.  Jesus wants his followers to be aware of what they are getting into when they follow in his Way.  But they are reassured … they do not go alone.

Travel light

Morning: Psalms 1, 2, 3; Jeremiah 36:11-26; I Corinthians 13:1-13

Evening: Psalms 4, 7; Matthew 10:5-15

Today I journey to Wales for a week to visit my mother.  Yesterday, I decide to pack as little as possible.  Then I read about Jesus’s sending out the disciples to share Good News.  Not surprisingly, the part that gets my attention is when Jesus says: “Take no gold, or silver or copper in your belts …” (They didn’t have Visa, eh!), “no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff.”  ‘Travel light’ seems like good advice for today and for life in general.  I’ll try to remember this when I get back!

Being forgiven makes it possible to love

Morning: Psalms 146, 147; Jeremiah 36:1-10; Acts 14:8-18

Evening: Psalms 111,112,113; Luke 7:36-50

Most of us need to find forgiveness for something.  When you are un-forgiven, the love in you shrinks.  When you find forgiveness, love expands within you and overflows to others.  Refusing to forgive someone is acting out your own need for forgiveness and love.  But when you forgive someone, you break open your own heart to love; you offer them (and yourself) a new world of possibilities.  Forgiveness multiplies love.  Love multiplies forgiveness.  You don’t have to be God to forgive someone.  Amazingly, though, when someone forgives you, it’s as if God has forgiven you too. 

Help wanted!

Morning: Psalms 137:1-6, 144; Jeremiah 35:1-19; I Corinthians 12:27-13:3

Evening: Psalm 104; Matthew 9:35-10:4

People think about God as a service provider rather than as an employer.  We don’t look for God under ‘Help Wanted!’ but under ‘Goods and Services’.  We come with requests, with “Help!” instead with “How may I help?”  Jesus calls disciples not as hangers-on but as workers in a harvest of wholeness and well-being on the earth. It is now ready. It is what we’re here for.  And what we need is already here … with one exception – that we all need to be employed in nurturing life and wholeness in ourselves and in one another.  Our help is required.

Vision for the blind, voice for the voiceless

Morning: Psalms 140, 142; 2 Kings 23:36-24:17; I Corinthians 12:12-26

Evening: Psalms 141, 143:1-11; Matthew 9:27-34

The healings of Jesus promise healing for all.  Two blind men receive their sight; another who is possessed and cannot speak finds his voice.  Jesus, when we seek him out, causes scales to fall from our eyes so that we see the world afresh … as a place of wonder and promise that is yearning for us to prize its beauty and love it into new life. Jesus, when we attend to him, calls the voiceless to speak … those whom the world marginalizes because their truth is too difficult to hear.  Jesus - Vision and Voice!

By faith, to be at one with Life.

Morning: Psalms 131, 132; 2 Kings 23:4-25; I Corinthians 12:1-11

Evening: Psalms 134, 135; Matthew 9:18-26

If Jesus is the Creative Word through whom all things were made, it is fair to expect that it is his nature to bring new life and healing.  And yet, we are mortal and know that life and health are temporary states for us.  Jesus calls us – through faith in him – not to immortality but to living well within the limits of our humanity.  He seeks to heal our Life, and teach us to endure, with grace and courage, the suffering we humans inevitably face on this earthly pilgrimage … thus, by faith, to be at one with Life.