Week of Sept. 30 Devotions

Sept 30, Sunday-Ps. 124 is a song of praise of surviving attack. Our sense of impregnability is gone after 9/11. Notice how its imagery is mostly flood imagery at first. It picks up mythic images of death and destruction, of being swept away. When have you been rescued: emotionally, spiritually, physically? Looking back over life, have you been rescued when you did not even realize it from a person or situation? Monday-this week is Sukkot in Jewish calendar. It lasts a week. It may be related to the booths/tabernacles Peter wanted to build at the Transfiguration. It is also a time of welcome for “angels unaware’ guests. Meals are eaten in its shelter, and some folks sleep in the makeshift structures as well. Zechariah saw it as presaging the messianic era. what is your favorite Christian festival? We speak of the 12 days of Christmas, but our holy times are a single day, usually ( although some work well with the seasons of Lent and Advent). Why is that? Tuesday-Can we love someone, if we judge them? It seems to me that judging someone puts them in an inferior position, so would that not undercut our capacity to love them on the level field of love? How does being judgmental undercut love, both loving and being loved? Has judging harmed your relationships? How do you fight being judgmental? Wednesday-I plan to see Mary Chapin Carpenter tonight. I suspect she will be pushing her most recent album, so I reviewed some of her lyrics. In “Chasing What’s Already Gone she writes you spend half your life paying it no attention/the rest wondering / what you should have done/instead of chasing what’s already gone.” where do you let the past vision undercut your present? Where do you nurture your regrets? Thursday-We had our high school reunion recently. This year, I had a prior commitment, so I was freed from making the decision to skip another one. We take the changes in ourselves as obvious, but we resent, a bit, how everyone else changes, because it violates our memory. I guess the point is to stimulate memories. I fear we go to compare ourselves to others. I wonder if we carry resentments and half hope the quarterback has grown pudgy, and the cheerleader weighs 300 pounds. In what ways does dunday worship have the good and bad points of a reunion? Friday-In studying Amos 7, I found out that the famous vision of the plumb line may well be a mistranslation and it may well be more like a defense of tin, shiny but weak. the plumb line is a great image for a God who measures our lives as on the level, but we have other images for God as judge. Tin (or plumb line) may not be an object is the point anyway, as the word is a word play on a sigh. We emphasize a victorious God, but where in your experience, or even yearning, is God present in a sigh? Saturday-We have a wedding today. I find rehearsals annoying, but I do love officiating at a wedding. People do not need to marry in church, but I am so moved that come, seeking the blessing of God on their love, their relationship, this new family they are creating. What Scriptures do you like in a wedding, other than I Cor 13? What is a memorable wedding service for you, other than your own?