Sunday-Ps 34 has the great line, taste and see that the Lord is good.Replace the word saints for righteous ones , and one gets a sense of why it was selected for All Saints day readings. It prompts in me the question, why does life seem so much more complicated than this? why do we need to push such promises over to the afterlife?
Monday (From God Pause, Oct. 25)Grandpa Knute had a ministry; he would spend his Sunday afternoons visiting the homebound, singing Norwegian hymns for them. Since Grandpa Knute himself had been widowed for a number of years, suspicious connections were made in the minds of some.He likely sang (from the old country) "Den store hvide flok" ("Behold the Host Arrayed in White,") and "I himmelen, i himmelen" ("In Heaven Above,") but also "Peace to Soothe Our Bitter Woes", bringing comfort to those bereaved, including himself, who outlived his spouse and nine of his eleven children, two of whom died in an 1897 lightning storm.
Tuesday-"putting the most charitable construction" part of Luther's explanation (words I learned in confirmation). To the occasional chagrin of her children who came storming home after a schoolyard spat, she would gently explore why the offending child may have acted in the way she or he did—the most charitable construction. By her words and example, we learned and grew. More than just the sentiments of a dutiful son, these thoughts are echoed by a cousin who similarly says of her aunt: "She was the most affirming person I have known."(God Pause)
Wednesday-”there’s a wideness in God’s mercy” Our human attributes for God tend to be those of power and might, wisdom and strength and the like. While power and might can destroy, mercy recovers, refreshes, redeems, restores, renews. We may be so fearful of mercy, lest it be exploited, that "we make this love too narrow by false limits of our own; and we magnify its strictness with a zeal God will not own."There's a wideness there, more than we can see, and with it we can breathe, freely.
Thursday-It's extraordinary how many numbers we carry around in our heads—countless telephone and fax numbers, ., ZIP codes, area codes, and so on and so forth.Numbers are lifeless and boring abstractions, yet for each of us there are some that are so charged that, if we happen to be paying attention, they can make our hearts skip a beat. The year somebody we loved was born or died... The number of steps there were to climb to our bedroom as a child. The age we were when we first fell in love. Uninteresting as they are in themselves, numbers remind us that, if we have our wits about us, almost anything we look at has treasure buried in it.
Friday-Micah 3:5-12-It is hard to wake up to the words of Micah. Micah is crying out in the darkness of a world torn by war and mothers crying out for food for starving children. He brings a word from God who is not only distressed that his creation has fallen into deep darkness, but is downright angry that the very People he has called to be a beacon of light are a part of the darkness.
Saturday-Which dimension of your work needs more attention: your inner work (prayer, meditation, journaling); your outer work (finding a vocation that fulfills you and helps mend the world); or your sense of connection to the greater work (the integration of your microchip into the eternal arc of God's work)? Don't try for anything: just be with the creative tension. See if you hear a whisper of invitation. (Ira Kent Groff)
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