June 3 Devotions

Trinity Sunday-Ps. 29 may well be lifted directly from the worship of the people of Canaan, as we have found some evidence of hymns that sound similar at places such as Ras Shamra in present day Lebanon. Go through some prayers of other faiths and adapt them to Christian usage. We are followers of the Truth, so we need have no fear of contamination but may feel free to explore meaningful approaches to God from different streams of faith. Monday-When our children graduated high school, I did breathe a sigh of real relief. Even as they are adults, though, I still worry. I wonder if God’s concern for us mutates into worry? We use the parental image of God routinely. Too often, we have used it as an image of correction. Is not the struggle sometimes similar? As parents we are caught between guidance and encouraging freedom and self-awareness and responsibility. Being a parent is always a difficult task. Tuesday-Janet Riley is being kind enough to let me use a piece of her yard for a vegetable garden. Recently, I thinned out some plants, always a difficult thing for me to do, to weed, always an annoying thing to do, and to reseed. I don't know why some patches of ground seem more resistant to seed than others. Where in your life does the Christian message take root and gorw easily? Where have you needed to reseed the message? Wednesday-In my new Christian Century, Craig Barnes has a nice piece on the presence of God extending from formal worship to the annual chili banquet in the church hall. He means that God is as fully present in the shared comforts and concerns in the fellowship hall meal as in the sanctuary. As he says, “we yearn to find jesus the Savior on laundry day.” Christianity is an incarnational faith as it sees the hand of God, the presence of god in the everyday. Indeed, when we call ourselves temple of the Spirit, our bodies, our everyday lives, are sanctuaries. Thursday-At Reformed Roundtable, we spoke a bit about God intervening in natural life. Part of me resists it, as arbitrary and intrusive, but part of me welcomes it as part of God's constant but not discrete acts of providence. I made the long drive to Indianapolis and had some narrow misses.Some of those were not averted by my skill or alertness, but more like an intuition.Think about times you have escaped narrowly, where it seems an accident was avoided, when the pieces fell into place. Friday-I am considering doing a book on the book of the twelves, the minor prophets. Of course, they are called minor due to their length compared to the three major prophetic books. In part their name has consigned them to be considered of minor scriptural importance, and that is a loss for the community of faith. For example, the image of thge divine in Hosea 11 and Jonah 4 are important elements of the character of divinity. Saturday-Yard Sales/Garage Sales seem popular at this time of year. Sometimes they are fundraisers, but I wonder if we should use the idea internally and have a yard sale of the clutter we keep inside. What crowds out our growth in other areas may well require that we create some space. What are some spiritual keepsakes that you could not part with? What would be baggage that you need to lose?