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.
Luke 4:31-37. I know who you are, the Holy One of God.
It’s one of the many ironies of the gospel accounts that only the demons immediately know who Jesus is. Jesus asked his friends who people thought he was. The demons knew the answer and responded, “Let us alone! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
Who is Jesus, the Holy One of God? That’s a question I find myself asking when I pray, trying to fathom the mystery of divine love—a love that comprehends the darkness within me, and in spite of this darkness calls me into the light.
The demons asked the question as a way of keeping their distance, out of fear that getting too close to this all-powerful and all-loving healer would be the end of them. We ask this question for the opposite reason—not to keep God at a distance, but to seek God’s guid-ance, God’s presence, God’s wisdom, God’s compassion. While the demons flee into the darkness, we crowd nearer to the Holy One of God.
Jesus…came among us and showed himself to us as that which we could never have thought to see: the synthesis of all perfections so that now each must of necessity see him and feel his presence, and must either hate or love what he sees.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
PRAY for the Diocese of Nicaragua (Central America)
Ps 26, 28 * 36, 39; Daniel 4:28-37; 1 John 4:7-21
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