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.
SATURDAY, November 27
Philippians 2:1-11. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
Here is my favorite non-biblical parable:
A man was taken on a tour of both heaven and hell. In hell he was shown a banquet hall filled with diners seated at a table laden with the choicest food. Each person’s back and left arm were tied to the chair so that bending at the waist was impossible and the left arm could not move. The right arm was stiffened so that the elbow would not bend. The diners gazed at and smelled the food just inches from them, but they were starving.
In heaven the picture was the same—backs and left arms shackled, right arms stiffened—but the diners were feasting and rejoicing because each diner used his stiffened right arm to feed the person to his right. “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” (1980)
When a man dies he clutches in his hands only what he has given away during his lifetime.
—Jean Jacques Rousseau
Even supposing a man of unholy life were suffered to enter heaven, he would not be happy there; so that it would be no mercy to permit him to enter.
—John Henry Newman
PRAY for the Diocese of Kilmore, Elphin, and Ardagh (Armagh, Ireland)
Ps 137:1-6(7-9), 144 * 104; Zechariah 14:12-21; Luke 19:41-48
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.
A Meditation for Pentecost
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This may be true; but, the earth currently produces enough food to nourish all 6.8 billion souls, whom Jesus teaches me are my neigbors.