Devotional Pts. for week of March 20

Sunday March 20 -The saving work of Christ is hidden in plain sight. Christ is in the midst of us. Praise, joy, and song are the right response. Blessing peace and glory are present and surely coming. The immediate future is not bright: weeping, betrayal, denial, are all on the horizon, and yet, the ultimate future is sure, forgiveness, reconciliation,and the reign of God relentlessly on the way...Therefore, we are called to point out the hidden pictures that reveal Christ-God for us and wish us in the very thick of it all. (Presbyterian Outlook)

Monday- God wants nothing so much as for us to know the love of God, ..., but that God wants us to be drenched and soaked in God's love and to learn to share in that love that is God's being so that we may become like God in ourselves and toward others. To do that requires a strange and paradoxical thing. We have to let go of ourselves. We have to let go of whatever image of ourselves we cling to. We have to let go of that false self certainty that demands that we feed its continual and bottomless appetites. We also have to let go of that self that appears so good that we would be willing to sacrifice absolutely everything to maintain it.(Abbey of the Arts or God Pause)

Tuesday-Isaiah 43:13-20 "I am about to do a new thing" says the Lord. Does this statement bring comfort or anxiety? It depends on how you view change, and what this statement means for us. When the Lord states a new thing is about to happen, be ready and hang on because it probably won't be a subtle change or go unnoticed. Because God knows our needs before we even ask, these new things can happen. Wednesday-"When the earth is saturated and drenched with rain, its verdancy invites us to consider the dry places of our own souls needing the gift of vigor and life through the element of water." --- Christine Valters Paintner Thursday-I imagine this True Self as the welcoming space within me that allows all the parts of me to dwell together. The True Self has become more about relationship and healing, a quality of connection within myself where the fragments have been gathered together and made whole again. This is who I was created to be, and it is in that work of remembering, gathering, weaving that I discover my deepest call.” Abbey of the Arts Friday-little by little,less by taking pains than by taking it easy,the forgiven person becomes a forgiving person, the healed person becomes healing,the loved person becomes a loving person. God does most of it. the end of the process, Paul says, is eternal life. Frederick Buechner Saturday-Douglas John Hall-”the theology of the cross is bound to this world in all of its materiality, ambiguity, and incompleteness...We whose movement in one way and another had always been away from the world, whether into our own private little worlds or to some theoretic supperworld of our own devising-we, through our baptism into his death are being directed toward the world where his life is being lived, hidden among the lives of those especially whom the world as such seems to have denied fullness of life.”