TUESDAY, January 19 (Wulfstan)
John 3:16-21. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
This is the most quoted verse of scripture in Sudan. Every single Christian knows it; it is part, it seems, of their conversion process. They believe in God, they believe in God's love through God's Son, Jesus, precisely because of this summation: God loved us so much his Son died for us and as a result we have life eternal.
Life here is so precarious. Everyone here has lost an immediate family member. Every day brings news of more death ... sometimes from fighting, sometimes from what should have been easily treatable diseases. Death stalks the land and its people.
The promise of eternal life, of there being more than this miserable life here, enlivens the people, makes them bold in their faith and bold in their lives, and gives them the hope they need to do what God wants them to do, to seek peace, justice, and reconciliation where none have existed before.
Believe, then, and live!
Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
PRAY for the Diocese of Amazon (Brazil)
Ps 26, 28 * 36, 39; Genesis 9:1-17; Hebrews 5:7-14
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.