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, June 26
Psalm 102. LORD, hear my prayer, and let my cry come before you; hide not your face from me in the day of my trouble.
This psalm brings many visions: a man suffering daily from chronic pain; an injured soldier trapped in a hospital far from home; a woman no longer able to recognize herself after chemotherapy treatments.
Often life deals us more than we feel we can handle. And it is very easy to lose faith in situations like these. To find comfort in this otherwise depressing psalm takes some effort. Dark laments of "I wither like the grass" and "my enemies revile me all day long" are intermingled with the psalmist's cry for help. The pleas are not polite--suffering has so consumed the writer that he demands attention from God. The only hope he still clings to is that God will hear his urgent pleas. He almost seems to be convincing himself that there is something greater.
Hope and faith are all that remain in desperate times like these. Hope that God will carry those who are suffering to some better plane; faith that God who created the earth will not only endure for all time--but will help sustain us in our time.
God's love's all gift, for God has need of naught, but human folk love one another for the way they fill each other's emptiness.
--Frederick Buechner
PRAY for the Diocese of Alabama (Province IV, U.S.)
Ps * 107:1-32; 1 Samuel 9:1-14; Acts 7:17-29; Luke 22:31-38
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.
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