Week of March 25 devotions

Sunday March 25- Ps. 51 is one of the great penitential psalms. Its heading recalls David coming to grips with his moral failings with Bathsheba. Not only doe she want to be cleansed, he asks for a “new heart to be created for him. When faced with our sin, our best offering is ‘a broken and contrite heart.” this from one who had moved the tabernacle and wanted to build a temple for the lord.

Monday-the issue of control springs up in all sorts of ways. Someone won’t say a preference out loud or says they don’t care and when someone does make a decision they hear they are controlling. Others cannot abide if anyone has an opinion on anything if \it would dare to not coincide with theirs. In part, the impulse to being controlling comes from seeing life as chaotic. At other times, it may be the incapacity to try to adjust to other points of view.

Tuesday-In Gal. 5:21-22 Paul shows the dichotomy between life in the Spirit and life in the flesh, anti-spirit if you will. Look at how the vice list shows how we do not treat people with respect or cannot live together in harmony. Look at how the virtue list shows the result of treating people with respect and living in harmony with others. Life in the spirit is the capacity of living together.

Wednesday –Robert Hayden’s poem, Those Winter Sundays, recalls a father who woke up firs to get the chill from a house and shined the shoes of his son for church. “No one ever thanked him.” He ends: “what did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices/?” What are some thankless tasks that were or are performed for you/ what are some thankless tasks you perform, all for love, all for love?

Thursday James Martin has a book on humor, Between Heaven and Mirth. he tells a story of a novice in a silent monastery where he can say 2 words every five years. the first time, he tells the abbot after five years, food cold. We’ll handle that, he is told. After ten years, he says, bed hard. We’ll handle it says the abbot. After 15 years, the monk say, I’m leaving. The abbot replies. No surprise. You’ve done nothing but complain since you got here. What are your favorite jokes? Favorite comedians?

Friday- I skimmed through a book on the reconstruction and extensions of the U. S. Capitol during the 1850s and early 1860s. The project was filled with missteps and tension, often due to the clash of ego, roles, and expectations. It is a great example that our ages not the only one where time and money are spilled out due to the inertia of the refusal to work together. Indeed, it could be a symbol for the tower of Babel. We find it os hard to speak the truth in love.

Saturday-I am paging through a new book on Copernicus by the talented writer Dana Sobel who has written on working out longitude for navigation and a wonderful piece on Galileo’s daughter, a nun. While he was revolutionizing astronomy and certain readings of the Bible, for that matter, he was involved in the day to day work as a church bureaucrat. While he was displacing the earth as the center of everything, he was up to his neck in making property assessments and working on currency reform. nPeople have depths we may merely guess at.