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, January 10 (William Laud)
Mark 1:1-13. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
The father stood before us on the chancel steps and announced a special guest, the preacher for the day. He listed his qualifications and professional accomplishments, and then he turned, and looked him full in the face and said, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.”
Those are the words we all want to hear. A man in prison told me he knew his father loved him, he had to have loved him—but he never told him. Not once did his father ever speak those words. And I knew that this was why—because the father had never spoken those words—this man was now in prison, where he would remain until he heard them.
These are the words of life. Jesus is a grown man, but his life as we know it, the life by which we have been nurtured, only begins when these words have been spoken. With these words, Jesus undertakes what he was born to do, and not before.
If you have never heard these words that announce life, then know this: you hear them now from God in Christ, for they are spoken for you, too—that your life may begin anew in the power and presence of the Risen One who came to live among us as one of us. (1997)
PRAY for the Diocese of Lesotho (Southern Africa)
Ps 1, 2, 3 * 4, 7; Isaiah 40:12-23; Ephesians 1:1-14
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