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.
MONDAY, August 31 (Aidan)
Mark 14:53-65. Have you no answer?
Jesus stands before Pilate. God incarnate faces the representative of temporal power. Pilate looks for answers from Jesus, but he asks the wrong question. He believes that this trial is about Jesus saving his skin. Jesus knows that it is about God saving humanity.
How often, it seems, that I too put "God in the Dock" (to quote C.S. Lewis). I want answers to my questions. "Why this? Jesus, what are you going to do about that? Why me? God, why do you allow tragedy, disease, pain and suffering, abuses of power? Jesus, have you no answer to make?"
The truth is, like Pilate, I am asking the wrong question. In fact, I need to attend more to the question that God is asking: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for me?" True life isn't about saving my skin. It is about living the life of one whom God in Christ has saved. It is about sharing that salvation in word and deed with a world in need.
There have been times when...I have looked in and seen the old questions lie folded and in a place by themselves, like the piled graveclothes of love's risen body.
-R. S. Thomas
PRAY for the Diocese of Sittwe (Myanmar)
Ps 25 * 9, 15; 2 Chronicles 6:32-7:7; James 2:1-13
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I think these persistent questions are what test my faith the most. I feel that there must be a God (i.e., higher intelligence), but I often have doubts about whether it is the God of the Bible. In light of the above questions, I think that God is so above any human comprehension that it becomes fruitless to ponder.
At the same time, I often feel drawn to worship and cannot become an atheist. I also love the beauty of the Episcopal liturgy. Though I am about to become a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church and also attend a Buddhist meditation group, I occasionally feel drawn to a Eucharist service.