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, July 4 Independence Day
Deuteronomy 10:17-21. For the Lord your God is...the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe...and who loves the strangers.
In the reading from Deuteronomy, Moses charges Israel to love the stranger, because the people of Israel were once strangers in Egypt. In Mark, Jesus entreats us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us because God is not partial. The sun rises on the just and the unjust.
It is easy for us to love friends and people like ourselves. Christians are called to greater challenge: to create a community in which we love the stranger and pray for the one who wants to do us harm.
I remember standing on the Lake Erie shore and reading that during the War of 1812 soldiers died there so that the lake would not belong to the British. The British were the bad guys. A little over a hundred years later, the United States fought two World Wars on the side of Great Britain. The British were good guys. In the intervening years, each country learned to see the other not as evil strangers, but as allies with common interests.
As we give thanks for our country, let us accept the challenge to create a community that includes those who might be our enemies, the people who today don’t seem to be one with us. Our perspective can change.
PRAY for the Diocese of Ottawa (Ontario, Canada)
Ps 145 * 145:1-9; Hebrews 11:8-16; Matthew 5:43-48
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