Today is Tuesday, the eighteenth day of June, 2024, in the fifth week of Ordinary Time.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Day 24,204
C continues to struggle with pain. I feel like a broken record, these days. She’s okay, as long as she keeps taking the pain meds, but she doesn’t have enough pills to last her until next Monday, if she takes one every 4-6 hours. I think she’s going to call the doctor again, today. I need to remind myself of my own devotional blog, yesterday.
It should be a more “normal” Tuesday, today, unless I wind up needing to take C somewhere. I’m scheduled to work, this evening, 4:15-8:15. I finally got some Mounjaro, yesterday, a 7.5 dose, which is the last dosage I was taking. The 10 dose still isn’t available from the retailers. I can’t even remember the last time I had some, but it’s been several months. It must be working, though, already, because I don’t feel like eating anything, this morning, and my glucose reading was back down to a more normal level.
Update: C has spoken with someone at the doctor’s office, and was assured that they would refill her pain meds. This was encouraging, and, after a brief conversation, she decided to try to get some more walking in. Things are looking up. We have to remember . . . it has barely been a week since this major surgery. I might also add that C is terrified of becoming addicted to pain meds, as there was a history of that with her mother. That affects her whole mindset toward the pills.
TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL AND PRAYERS
Most merciful God,
we confess that we are in bondage to sin
and cannot free ourselves.
We have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved You with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
For the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us.
Forgive us, renew us, and lead us,
so that we may delight in Your will
and walk in Your ways,
to the glory of Your holy name.
Amen.
Lord our God, radiant, light giving, and almighty God through all the ages, be with us in our time too. Strengthen the grace we have received from Jesus Christ, and let it be known over all the world so that your name may be honored everywhere. Bless us, we pray, and let your blessing spread from us to others, to the glory of your name. Grant that the good may be strengthened in us, the good you have let us hear about for so many years. May everything that belongs to your Word come alive in us and in the world. May your blessing be on our actions, for we want to remain under your blessing, to the glory of your righteousness and truth. Amen.
(Daily Prayer from Plough.com)
Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning,
for in you I put my trust.
Teach me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
(Psalms 143:8 NRSV)
Today I am grateful:
- for the grace of God in all things
- for His steadfast love in the morning
- that You, O Lord, sustain me through times of doubt and trouble
- that God alone can make me worthy of His call
- that God’s way is perfect and His promise is true
I love you, O LORD, my strength.
The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised,
so I shall be saved from my enemies.
In my distress I called upon the LORD;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears.
This God—his way is perfect;
the promise of the LORD proves true;
he is a shield for all who take refuge in him.
For who is God except the LORD?
And who is a rock besides our God?—
the God who girded me with strength,
and made my way safe.
He made my feet like the feet of a deer,
and set me secure on the heights.
(Psalms 18:1-3, 6, 30-33 NRSV)
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, among the peoples,
and I will sing praises to you among the nations.
For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens,
and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens,
and let your glory be over all the earth.
(Psalms 108:3-5 NRSV)
I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart;
before the gods I sing your praise;
I bow down toward your holy temple
and give thanks to your name
for your steadfast love and your faithfulness;
for you have exalted your name
and your word above everything.
On the day I called, you answered me,
you increased my strength of soul.
The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me;
your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.
Do not forsake the work of your hands.
(Psalms 138:1-3, 8 NRSV)
Indeed, you are my lamp, O LORD,
the LORD lightens my darkness.
(2 Samuel 22:29 NRSV)
Hear my prayer, O LORD;
give ear to my supplications in your faithfulness;
answer me in your righteousness.
Do not enter into judgment with your servant,
for no one living is righteous before you.
(Psalms 143:1-2 NRSV)
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
(Ephesians 3:14-19 NRSV)
To this end we always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
(2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 NRSV)
Just a couple of things that stick out to me, today. The first is just above the most recent purple line, in 2 Thessalonians. Note that, in his prayer, Paul prays that “God will make you worthy of his call.” God will do it. I cannot make myself worthy of the call of God in my life. I cannot prepare myself.
To me, this is reminiscent of Jesus’s parable of the soils. There are, perhaps, several lessons to learn from that parable, but the one that struck me the most was that the “good soil” did nothing to make itself good. Soil is soil. It cannot do anything to make itself good or bad. In the same way, I can do nothing to change my basic makeup.
One of the choruses we sing, regularly, at my church, goes like this:
Lord, let my heart be good soil,
open to the seed of your Word.
Lord, let my heart be good soil,
where love can grow and peace is understood.
When my heart is hard,
break the stone away.
When my heart is cold,
warm it with the day.
When my heart is lost,
lead me on your way.
Lord, let my heart,
Lord, let my heart,
Lord, let my heart be good soil.
(Handt Hanson, 1985)
So, yes. May we pray that God would make us worthy of His call, because only He can.
The other thing comes from Psalm 18. “This God—his way is perfect; the promise of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all who take refuge in him.” (v. 6) In the last reading that I read, today, I was directed to the end section of Job, where God finally answers all of the rhetoric that has been spewed forth in the preceding chapters.
In Job 38, God begins hammering Job with questions. Non-stop; bam bam bam! After several chapters of this (including one that I will forever believe proves the existence of dragons), Job’s only possible response comes in 42:6. ” . . . therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
God is God; I am not. In essence, God is telling Job, “You wouldn’t understand, even if I told you.” But the fact that God answered Job at all is remarkable, because He didn’t have to.
And God doesn’t have to interact with us. Some folks don’t believe He does. But I believe that He does; I believe that He condescends (and for God it truly is condescending) to deal with us. And we would do well to remember that His way is perfect. His promise is true. And He is definitely a shield for all who will take refuge in Him.
Father, I thank You and praise You for Who You are. You are God, and I am not. I do not need to understand everything that You do. Yet, You have sometimes explained Yourself to us, anyway. You and Your ways are perfect. Your promise is true and sure. And You are a shield about me, whenever I take refuge in You.
I do note, however, that when I stop taking refuge in You, I open myself up to a lot of unpleasantness in my life. And I confess that this is my own doing. Conversely, I also confess that there is nothing that I can do to make myself worthy of Your call in my life, nor is there any way I could be worthy of Your grace, mercy, and good promises.
So I, like Job, repent in sackcloth and ashes, turning from any ill-conceived notion that I know best about anything at all. You are God, and I am not. You are in the heavens and I am here on earth. Therefore, I should let my words be few. And the words that I will speak will magnify Your name, not mine.
“Lord, let my heart be good soil.”
Father in heaven,
make my life a Christ-home,
fully furnished with his grace, beauty, and strength.
Today I guard in my heart the gospel declaration
that I am approved and accepted in Christ.
In faith, I claim for myself the righteousness of Jesus
and apply all his power and riches,
the fullness of God in me.
Fill me with your love.
Amen.
(Seeking God's Face, Ordinary Time - Week 5, Day 3
Lord, in Your mercy, hear, now, the prayers lifted up to you for all who need strength, healing, comfort, and peace.
If you are reading this, I encourage you to stop and pray for someone, at this time. Or, if there is something on your heart, please leave a comment. What can I pray for you?
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
(Ephesians 3:20-21 NRSV)
Grace and peace, friends.
Seeking His Face; Sharing His Grace 