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Forward Movement Publications
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MONDAY, February 8 |
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Hebrews 13:1-16. Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
God has interrupted me. Not with a lightning bolt, but just with a quiet visitor.
There I was, working on a writing project about displaced persons, when an actual displaced person showed up at my door. Hitler drove this man from his native country years ago. Now he is a good American and serves America well. Now he is married and there's a baby coming. And he's looking for a church. "Which church?" he asks. "You have so many different ones!"
I talked to him about our church and gave him some things to read. But something troubles me. There are two churches within walking distance of his home (he has no car, and remember the baby), but to which shall I send him? With his faulty English and still foreign manner, am I right to invite him to our church, or should I send him to the other one? Would either of them make him welcome? Would either be a home in Christ for this man and his family? They need the real thing--a fellowship of practicing Christians who will show forth grace, understanding, the love of Christ. Will either church do the real thing or only a surface job?
Would your parish receive this couple as our Lord would? I pray so. (1948)
PRAY for the Diocese of Athabasca (Rupert's Land, Canada)
Ps 80 * 77, [79]; Genesis 25:19-34; John 7:37-52
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.
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SUNDAY, February 7 5 Epiphany |
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EDITOR'S NOTE: 2010 marks the 75th anniversary of Forward Day by Day. To commemorate this milestone, the meditations from February 1, 2010 through January 31, 2011 feature reprints of the most outstanding meditations from our past 75 years. The year each meditation was originally written is included at the end of the meditation. To learn more about our anniversary and the selection process for these meditations, click here. We encourage you also to share your comments about these classic meditations below. Our editor, Richard Schmidt, will be responding to comments for these meditations.
Luke 5:1-11. Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!
When Isaiah had his vision of God, he felt an immediate sense of his own uncleanness. Peter, in the presence of Christ, became aware of his sinfulness. One of the effects of the holiness of God is to cause us to see our sin and our own unworthiness in stark reality. In the contrast we see what we might be, and what we truly are.
In that instant when Peter asks Jesus to depart from him because he is sinful, Jesus does not leave him. Peter may have been surprised and shocked by the self-realization of his sin, but God was not. God knew it all the time. It often requires a shock, a contrast, to enable God to break through our self- satisfaction and our pride. When we feel ashamed and unworthy, our defenses are down.
So the Lord doesn't depart from us. The depth of our sin may surprise us. All through our blindness Christ is beside us, and when we begin to see ourselves as we really are, he is able to bestow on us his forgiveness and renewing strength. He has been with us all the time.
Awareness of our sin is the awareness of our need for God. Let us welcome it. (1981)
PRAY for the Church of the Province of Central Africa and the Diocese of Upper Shire
Ps 138; Isaiah 6:1-8(9-13); 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.
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SATURDAY, February 6 |
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EDITOR'S NOTE: 2010 marks the 75th anniversary of Forward Day by Day. To commemorate this milestone, the meditations from February 1, 2010 through January 31, 2011 feature reprints of the most outstanding meditations from our past 75 years. The year each meditation was originally written is included at the end of the meditation. To learn more about our anniversary and the selection process for these meditations, click here. We encourage you also to share your comments about these classic meditations below. Our editor, Richard Schmidt, will be responding to comments for these meditations.
Hebrews 12:12-29. Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees.
When pioneers in covered wagons crossed the prairies and mountains to go west, there was no room for extra baggage. They had to sit loose and travel light.
This was the situation for the Hebrews in the wilderness. Nomads on the march, they could not afford a clutter of possessions. They traveled with the bare necessities. Something of this same trimness entered into their religious life as well. There was a simplicity about the Mosaic religion: the laws could be counted on your fingers; ritual was at a minimum.
Lent will be here before long. As we prepare for it, we might learn the discipline of traveling light. It applies to our theological dogmas as well as our material comforts. Paul reminds us in his Letter to the Hebrews to lay aside every weight as we run the course ahead.
Some of the burden consists of our sins, of course. We are all hindered by our selfishness, our lack of concern for others. A good deal of the weight, however, is just ecclesiastical baggage--the outworn good we carry long after its utility has disappeared.
The world is on the march. If we are to minister, we had best strip for action and learn to travel light, lifting our drooping hands and strengthening our weak knees, following our Lord's example. (1971)
PRAY for the Diocese of Asaba (Prov. of Bendel, Nigeria)
Ps 75, 76 * 23, 27; Genesis 24:28-38, 49-51; John 7:14-36
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.
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FRIDAY, February 5 (The Martyrs of Japan) |
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EDITOR'S NOTE: 2010 marks the 75th anniversary of Forward Day by Day. To commemorate this milestone, the meditations from February 1, 2010 through January 31, 2011 feature reprints of the most outstanding meditations from our past 75 years. The year each meditation was originally written is included at the end of the meditation. To learn more about our anniversary and the selection process for these meditations, click here. We encourage you also to share your comments about these classic meditations below. Our editor, Richard Schmidt, will be responding to comments for these meditations.
Psalm 69. Zeal for your house has eaten me up.
There is an insistent quality about God and his demands which we often forget, often allow to be hidden from us by other things.
The biblical word for this is "jealous." God is a jealous God. Of course, he is not jealous in the green-eyed sense, but he is jealous in the sense he will not be satisfied with the normal subpar allegiance, the half-hearted commitment. He is not satisfied because such a halfhearted commitment will only bring us grief and misery and, ultimately, death.
God loves us, and knows that our true good, happiness, and even genuine human life itself, depend on our relationship with him. Of course he must be jealous for us (not of us).
The Good News is that Christ's bitter death, in some way we do not understand, is the help that leads us to and lets us make that full and growing commitment. The zeal for God's house ate Jesus up, and he knew it would, for he was jealous for the people of God with God's own kind of jealousy.
Through his zeal, grace. Through his grace, our commitment to life. (1964)
PRAY for the Diocese of Aru (Congo)
Ps 69:1-23(24-30)31-38 * 73; Genesis 24:1-27; Hebrews 12:3-11; John 7:1-13
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THURSDAY, February 4 (Cornelius the Centurion) |
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EDITOR'S NOTE: 2010 marks the 75th anniversary of Forward Day by Day. To commemorate this milestone, the meditations from February 1, 2010 through January 31, 2011 feature reprints of the most outstanding meditations from our past 75 years. The year each meditation was originally written is included at the end of the meditation. To learn more about our anniversary and the selection process for these meditations, click here. We encourage you also to share your comments about these classic meditations below. Our editor, Richard Schmidt, will be responding to comments for these meditations.
Genesis 23:1-20. I am a stranger and an alien residing among you.
As I walked down the cathedral's huge center aisle, I saw large black and white photographs on the wall--pictures of frightened men and women with yellow stars on their clothing; children with wild, questioning eyes; cattle cars crammed with people. As I approached the chancel I saw a statue of a human being dying in agony--his arm stretched to heaven as if to make one last plea for confirmation that mercy and goodness existed somewhere in the world.
The occasion was a service for Yom HaShoah, commemorating the Jews murdered before and during World War II. I ached to think that centuries of Christian animosity had played a role in "the Final Solution." The church had played a part by negating all things Jewish--its spirituality, experience, identity, and validity.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote that "faith has need of the whole truth." As we seek to grow in our understanding of our tradition, we must also learn the darker side of the church's history, so that we do not carry those mistakes into our present or our future. (1990)
PRAY for the Diocese of Arochukwu/Ohafia (Province of The Niger Delta, Nigeria)
Ps [70], 71 * 74; Hebrews 11:32-12:2; John 6:60-71
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.
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