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, December 20
John 5:30-47. You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.
Many Christians read the Bible the wrong way. We read not so much to find God as to find support for our notions about God. Rather than learn a solid theology from the Bible, we use the Bible to defend a theology we have already devised.
And sometimes we commit an even more grievous error. We see the revelation of God as something God wrote in a book rather than as something God did in history. We make a big mistake when we view the Bible as God’s revelation: it is the record of God’s revelation.
Jesus said that the scriptures “testify in my behalf.” Let us join the psalmist and sing, “And in the temple of the Lord all are crying, ‘Glory!’ ” (Psalm 29). (1994)
Is the revelation in the book or in the events which the book records? Plainly it could not be in the book unless it is first in the events. And this is the witness of the book itself; for the prophets, who claimed that the word of the Lord came to them, were largely occupied in reading the lessons of history to the people whose history it was. Living by faith in the personal and living God, they saw his hand in all that affected the people with whom they were concerned.
—William Temple
PRAY for the Diocese of Kumasi (West Africa)
Ps 61, 62 * 112, 115; Isaiah 11:1-9; Revelation 20:1-10
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.
A Meditation for Pentecost
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