Devotional Pts. week of Nov. 22

Sunday-Ps.132 is a psalm of a dream of restoration and an element of the messianic hope.With Jesus as Messiah, how do you see the crown gleaming (v. 18)? What is your hope in the Second Advent of Christ? Monday Daniel 12:1-3. We all have moments when being scared has the potential to bind us and hold it over us. The words of Daniel 12 come to us from a community in anguish and scared of the things happening around them. The great apocalyptic visions of heroic princes and names written in the book served to comfort the people in the midst of their being scared. God has not forsaken them; in fact, God continues to fight for them and on the final day, when the trumpet sounds, God will indeed raise them from the dead with their lights shining like the bright sky and shining stars. (God Pause)

Tuesday-Our culture is fascinated with things like the zombie apocalypse. Why do you think this is so? How does this relate, if at all, to the end times in Mark 13 and other biblical texts? (If you haven't read Brian Blount's book "Invasion of the Dead, Preaching Resurrection"

Wednesday-"You understand so little of what is around you because you do not use what is within you" Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), in Scivias.

Thursday-Thomas Merton-"we have now reached a stage of (long-overdue) religious maturity at which it may be possible for someone to remain perfectly faithful to a Christian and Western monastic commitment and yet to learn in depth from, say, a Buddhist or Hindu discipline and experience."

Friday-Pope Francis told a gathering of Italian bishops that the church can and must change. "We are not living in an era of change but a change of era....Before the problems of the church it is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism, in the restoration of obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally." We are a church "semper reformanda," always to be reformed. Note that is a Presbyterian watchword as well, please.

Saturday-Hebrews 10:11-14 Inscribed on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's makeshift prison altar-table was the Greek word 'eph'hapax' meaning "once-for-all." It testifies that Christ's death on the cross was a sacrifice made "once-for-all," and that "all" includes you, me, and the whole world. . We did not ask for it--we received it as a gift. Done. Finished. (God Pause)