Sunday-Ps.77-starts as a lament.the questions in verses 7-9 are deep, abiding questions. They also reflect a view of god that many do not share in terms of engagement with the world. Creation and memory are the tools of the psalmist to move from lament. What are yours?
Monday-When Abide With Me is sung at a funeral I always pray the organist will throw open the swell chest and hit the button for the zimbelstern when we arrive at this final verse. It is the gospel writ large and then shrunk down to this powerful image of a cross held up before the closing of an eye. None of us knows how long he or she has on this earth, but we have a God who knows what it means to live and to die. We trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead speaks that same word of life to us. God, abide with me this day and in the days to come. Whether they number many or few, I know that you walk three days ahead of me through death into eternal life. May the light of that life break into my heart even today. Amen.Chris Enstad
For resurrection faith means courage to revolt against the "covenant with death" (Isa. 28:15), it means hope for the victory of life which shall swallow up and conquer life-devouring death. ~ p.14” ― Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Play
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.” Chesterton
Thursday- Niebuhr wrote, I do not have the evidence which allows me to say that the miracle of faith in God is worked only by Jesus Christ and that it is never given to people outside the sphere of his working, though I may say that where I note its presence I posit the presence of something like Jesus Christ.
Friday-“The joyful paradox of our spiritual poverty is that God’s fullness can flow through our emptiness; in our weakness God’s power can be revealed; in our insufficiency grace suffices.
Saturday-“The first truth is the most basic affirmation of our faith: God loves us. This is not a general rule to which you, personally, may be an exception. It is not a conditional rule that applies only when you are good, pure, and lovable. God's passionate and personal love for each and every human being expresses who God is. Unfailing love is the divine nature and the divine choice in relation to us. God loves us with an overwhelming love that none of our sins can erase.While we can grieve and disappoint this love, nothing we do or fail to do can alter its depth or reality. It is a gift, a given.We cannot control whether God loves us by efforts to gain this love or even to lose it. Since we neither deserve nor earn such love, God's fondest dream is that we will receive and respond to it.”
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