Week of Oct. 20 devotional points

Sunday-Ps. 119:97-104 is today’s selection from the enormous psalm that sits in the center of most Bibles. This hymn to God’s order and teaching stresses wisdom. Wisdom strikes me as co-operative  as it is both gift but also task for us. When have you heeded wisdom and when have you ignored it? Why?

Monday-"Let us pray to live from our hearts. Let us pray that we enliven what the old Hasidic tradition defines as dawn--that when we look into the face of another human being and have enough light to see ourselves, then we have awakened, then we have opened the living moment of compassion where night ends and day begins." (Robert Lehman) When are you able to see the light in another’s soul? How do the sacrmanets touch on this quote?

Tuesday- John Philip Newell-“In the many details of this day let me be fully alive. In the handling of food and the sharing of drink, in the preparing of work and the uttering of words, in the meeting of friends and the interminglings of relationship let me be alive to each instant, O God, let me be fully alive.” I tend to think we are only fully alive in relationship. When are you most tempted to take things for granted and when are you most alive to the prompting sof the spirit of God?

Wednesday-Persistence is the antidote to resistance. It is a mark of maturity to realize that some things are slow in coming, and others may never bear fruit. Still, we keep at them out of belief in intrinsic merit or a hope that the object will improve things.When has persistence succeeded ro failed with you? When have you been persistent toward a spiritual goal?

Thursday-I go to a college reunion today. It will be a test of memory’s flexibility. some folks I have kept in contact, but others have faded from much of any touch point in life. It let me to think about what sort of family reunions we will enjoy in heaven. I do not remember my father, dead before I was three. I wonder how I would meet him in another dimension of existence. Whom do you wish to meet or see in heaven?

Friday-I hope the government museums are open in Washington today, but we can use some of the charging ones as well. I fear that osme churches are moving toward being museum pieces as they often are in Europe. At the same time, I am so pleased that som many churches try to use the creativity and talent of artists to make worship space beautiful for the worship of God. Part of me cringes at the cost, but it still strikes me as a worthy aspiration. What are noteworthy churches in your experience in terms of their artistic structures?

Saturday-I have been reading a lot on the Holy Spirit for our group next month. the late evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock in the Holy Sprit and the Flame of Love wrote: “the spirt has been implementing god’s purposes from day one and seeing that they issue in restoration…the spirit is the ecstasy that implements God’s abundance and triggers the overflow of divine self-giving.” How do you spea