Forward Movement is an official, non-profit agency of the Episcopal Church whose mission is to create compelling content for Christian living. Since 1935 we have published the quarterly devotional Forward Day by Day, as well as pamphlets, booklets, and books that encourage and nourish people in their lives of prayer and faith.
FRIDAY, July 9
Psalm 22. Yet you are he who took me out of the womb, and kept me safe upon my mother's breast.
God, it feels that you have forsaken me. Our ancestors trusted in you and you delivered them; but people look on me as a worm, and you ignore me as though I didn't exist.
But it was you who brought me into the world. When I sucked my mother's milk, I was acting on that life-impulse that animates all your creatures, the hope you planted in me. And so, while my desolate heart tells me that you have abandoned me, my mind clings to the thought that you brought me into this life and bid me now to live and trust you to bring me through. If I am nothing, it is because you created me to be nothing, and I know that cannot be.
Thus thought this troubled psalmist of long ago. This psalm was also our Lord's "song in the night" on his cross. And it is healing medicine for us whenever we feel less than nothing in God's world. God brought us into this life. Shall he not see us through it? Read this psalm carefully, read it whole, and when you need a song in your night, turn to it. (1981)
PRAY for the Diocese of Eastern Zambia (Central Africa)
Ps 16, 17 * 22; Deuteronomy 31:7-13, 24-32:4; Romans 10:1-13; Matthew 24:15-31
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