Morning Grace

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. LORD, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, LORD, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the LORD more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities. ~ Psalm 130 We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”  ―  C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed One of the hardest lessons I think th...

- Re-read the passages from this week's devotions. Choose the one that is most meaningful to you to be your prayer focus for today. They are: Jeremiah 2:12-13 John 4:5-14 Ephesians 4:25-32 Isaiah 59:9-19 Luke 8:1-3 - Read the passage again and identify a word or phrases that jump out at you. - Read the passage again, and if possible read from a different translation ( biblegateway.com  has many translations you can choose from). Identify where this passage might be touching your life today. How is this relevant to your life? - Read the passage a third time, again in a different translation if possible. Ask yourself what God is calling you to do or to be from this passage. What change might God be moving your toward? - Close with a silent prayer, listening to God rather than speaking to God. What actions will you take today based on this prayer? - Recite the Lord's Prayer.

Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him,as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them   out of their resources. ~ Luke 8:1-3 It was not the privileged and the fortunate who took in the Jews in France. It was the marginal and damaged, which should remind us that there are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish. If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. If you bomb a city, you leave behind death and destruction. But you create a community of remote misses. If you take away a mother or a father, you cause suffering and despair. But one time in ten, out of that despair rises as indomitable force. You see the giant and the shepherd in the Valley o...

Therefore justice is far from us,    and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo! there is darkness;    and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.  We grope like the blind along a wall,    groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight,    among the vigorous  as though we were dead.  We all growl like bears;    like doves we moan mournfully. We wait for justice, but there is none;    for salvation, but it is far from us.  For our transgressions before you are many,    and our sins testify against us. Our transgressions indeed are with us,    and we know our iniquities:  transgressing, and denying the LORD,    and turning away from following our God, talking oppression and revolt,    conceiving lying words and uttering them from the heart....

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. ~ Ephesians 4:25-32 We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. ~ JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Another one of Paul...

Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate,  says the LORD ,   for my people have committed two evils:  hey have forsaken me,  the fountain of living water,  and dug out cisterns for themselves,  cracked cisterns  that can hold no water. ~ Jeremiah 2:12-13 So (Jesus) came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans).  Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, an...

- Re-read the passages from this week's devotions. Choose the one that is most meaningful to you to be your prayer focus for today. They are: Colossians 1:15-23 Exodus 16:9-21 Genesis 24:1-9 Isaiah 7:10-14 I Corinthians 10:1-4 Numbers 21:4-9 - Read the passage again and identify a word or phrases that jump out at you. - Read the passage again, and if possible read from a different translation ( biblegateway.com  has many translations you can choose from). Identify where this passage might be touching your life today. How is this relevant to your life? - Read the passage a third time, again in a different translation if possible. Ask yourself what God is calling you to do or to be from this passage. What change might God be moving your toward? - Close with a silent prayer, listening to God rather than speaking to God. What actions will you take today based on this prayer? - Recite the Lord's Prayer.

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,  that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. ~ I Corinthians 10:1-4 and The LORD spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test. Then Isaiah said: "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the LORD himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. ~ Isaiah 7:10-14  I don’t read the Bible like a flat line. I don’t see all of the passages in the Bible sitting equally side by side ...

Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years; and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things. Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, who had charge of all that he had, "Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, but will go to my country and to my kindred and get a wife for my son Isaac." The servant said to him, "Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land; must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?" Abraham said to him, "See to it that you do not take my son back there. The LORD, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my birth, and who spoke to me and swore to me, 'To your offspring I will give this land,' he will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. But if the woman is...

Then Moses said to Aaron, "Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, 'Draw near to the LORD, for he has heard your complaining.'" And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud. The LORD spoke to Moses and said, "I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, 'At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.'" In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. This is w...

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers -- all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him -- provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope prom...