August 21 Devotions

Sunday Ps. 124 speaks clearly of enemies but in actual but also mythic context. By the latter I mean seeing the world as reflecting a battle between good and evil From what trouble have you escaped? When have you been able to “fly away” from trouble?Have you been the cause of trouble?

Monday-Had an interesting discussion in morning Bible class-(note it moves to Wednesday mornings at 9:30 as I will teach at Lewis and Clark on Tuesday) on Romans 2 and judge not. we all know the saying but what does it mean? Do me it means to convict someone on one’s own. what’s the standard? Our own ideas. Do we ever judge someone positively? When you were in school were you ever praised with “constructive criticism’? It is not our place to judge, but god’s. Our perspective is too self-interested, too distorted to judge by God’s own standard.

Tuesday -Pride has long been considered a particularly deadly sin. First let’s be careful with words. don’t confuse it with pride in oneself or one’s work, more like arrogance, maybe even narcissism, a leering superiority that looks down on everybody. Arrogance removes us from the central issue of human life:we are not gods but we think we should be.

Wednesday Alan Thames, Executive Presbyter of whitewater Valley, posted a great quote recently on facebook. “Ours is not the task of fixing the whole world at once, but to stretch out to help mend a part of it within reach. Any small calm thing one soul can do for another soul will help immensely.” recently I prayed that we feel called to help heal the world but feel like we do social triage. god gathers up the pieces of our small acts and words of kindness and those help to compose the world of God’s own creation.

Thursday-I grew up in a small town. Facebook is being flooded with memories of it from the fifties to the seventies or eighties I would guess. I don’t seem to remember nearly as much as the people posting memories. Think of some funny childhood stories. who were some characters where you grew up? who were your best and worst teachers and why? How did you spend time with your friends? what were your church experiences like? From there, have you changed a lot or are you basically the same person? where did you shake the dust off your feet and what did you make sure to retain from your hometown?

Friday Romans 12 shows the impossibility of reading the Bible literally. Paul work off a literal interpretation when he says we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice (offering). clearly he means that the way we live out our lives is a communication to god that should be of the perfect quality fo the old animal sacrifices. what have you done in the past week that would be a fitting gift to god?What words have you offered that would be a proper sacrifice to the divine One?

Saturday Were people as touchy thirty years ago as they seem to be today?I don’t remember people almost itching to take offense at an innocent remark, almost as if they are looking to take offense. With all of our talk about self-esteem, it seems to me that we are more brittle than before. If we but recall that we are baptized, full members of the household of God, would that help? What things are you perhaps overly touchy about? Does that happen under stress?