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.
THURSDAY, May 26
Luke 8:26-39. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.
We don’t usually read the New Testament for its comedy. But the part of this story where the demons come out of the crazy naked man and rush into pigs who scramble down a steep bank into the lake and drown themselves like a bunch of lemmings—well, it has its comic elements. And by comic I don’t mean only funny (although if, like the original hearers of this story, you don’t care for pigs, to see them get the same comeuppance as the demons might incite a bit of rueful laughter). I also mean comic in its more classic sense: strong comedies end in moments of restoration and healing like this one.
But as in so many classic comedies, a shadow haunts the festivities. Jesus’ dramatic healing of the naked demoniac unveils a power for good in the world that contradicts all expectations and breaks all the rules. He’s scary. What happened at the cliff invokes not laughter but fear in the people who witnessed it, a fear that will later morph into acts of violence aimed against the very healer who came to save.
Laughter has much in common with prayer. In both acts, we stand on equal ground, freely acknowledging ourselves as fallen creatures. —Philip Yancey
PRAY for the Diocese of Northern Luzon (Philippines)
Ps [70], 71 * 74; Wisdom 14:27—15:3; Romans 14:1-12
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