Daily Devotions

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn us back to dust, and say, “Turn back, you mortals.”

For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.  For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.

For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh.  The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you. So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. Psalm 90:1-12

Psalm 90 encourages us to “count our days.”  This is one season of the year when we all find ourselves counting days – the number of shopping days before Christmas, the number of school days before Christmas vacation, the number of days until pay day.

Psalm 90 is where we get the idea that “God’s time” is not the same as “our time.”  1000 years is nothing in God’s time but it is a long time for us.  Even if we count in dog years.  But our lives, however long, will always not only be brief over against forever but will be bafflingly brief to us as we live through them.

Every year seems to pass by more and more quickly.  So what do we do with that information?

Again, Psalm 90 invites us to count our days.  Perhaps turning that phrase around might unlock its meaning for us.

What would it mean for us to make every day of our lives count?  What makes something “count” in the long run?

Oddly enough, when I think about my own life, it isn’t some kind of major accomplishment that would make my life count.  It is instead the little pieces of daily faithfulness that probably make the most difference.  This is a good thing because when I’m gone, those who will miss me and those I most affected won’t have a lot of major accomplishments to draw from in reflecting on my life.  They will remember the little things.  A comment here.  A conversation there.  A new idea.  Simply showing up.

Many of the most significant moments of our lives – when it comes to our impact on others – are often moments when we are completely unaware of what is going on, and clueless to the lasting impact.  Unfortunately, that works for both the good that we do and the pain that we inflict.

We put this together and suddenly we see that “counting our days” and “making our days count” both come together when we focus, not on the past that we can’t change or the future that lies only in God’s hands, but on the present.  On today.  On now. On the next right thing.  The next right step.  On the God who holds our hands along the way.

Maybe this is the only wisdom we really need.  Maybe this is why today, in the gift of God that is life, is called the “present”.

Let us pray:  We come to you this moment, God our Creator, our Redeemer and our Sanctifier, to thank you for the gift of our lives, for the gift of new life.  We count because you have counted us, even the hairs on our heads are numbered.  So we pray right now for freedom from the past that we cannot change, for hope in the future that we cannot see, for love to live this moment well.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.

Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Luke 1:5-17

This year in our midweek Advent services I am focused on joining some of the key characters in Luke’s telling of the birth of Jesus.  Last week, I thought about this season through the eyes of Zechariah (click here to see how that went.)  Today, Joseph.  Next week, the innkeeper.  And the last week, a shepherd.

We come to Zechariah and we instantly make the Old Testament connections.  The continuing theme of “this couple is too old” or “this woman is too barren” but then God does a new thing and a special child is born to them.  We remember angelic visitations or the surprising voice of God showing up to provide guidance or a new calling.

We see all of that and it is interesting and it is the kind of stuff that Luke expects us to see.  But this year, in having fun with Zechariah, it ocurred to me that – though he was old and the odds weren’t good – perhaps Zechariah (whose name means “God remembers”) still clung to the hope that God would remember him and Elizabeth, that God would still remember God’s people.  Perhaps Zechariah never quit dreaming of what God might yet do.

Most of the people who attend our midweek services are of the “seasoned citizen” generation.  They have been faithful for a long long time.  They are the backbone of our ministry.  Just think of all they have been through.  Think of all the changes that have swept across our world, changes that affect every aspect of our lives.  Think of all that has happened in their families, in their extended families.  Think of the dreams they had as young people and how many of them have been realized, how many dashed, and how many surprises along the way.

Imagine what today, December 7th, means to a generation of people whose best friends from high school were at Pearl Harbor, or at the Army recruiting office within a week of this date that will live in infamy.

Then re-enter this story about with Zechariah.  He enters a holy space for a holy purpose.  He has no idea the news he will soon receive, let alone the sea change about to come to the life he shares with Elizabeth.  No wonder he was rendered speechless!

Do we still dream big dreams?  Do we still anticipate God doing new and wonderful things?  Are we open to the possibility that God has dreams for our lives and that one day those dreams might come rushing in, upsetting the apple carts of our well laid plans?

These are Advent questions.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, to dream is to see hope where there seems to be no ground for hope.  To dream is to see what could be, what might be, even what ought to be.  We pray that you gift us with dreams, with visions, of what you would do for, and through, us.  May we never stop dreaming.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

“See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?  For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.” Malachi 3:1-4

Refining.  Let’s think about that word this morning.

Malachi tells us that a messenger will prepare the way for the arrival of the “Lord whom you seek.”  Malachi writes out of a long tradition that anticipates the great “Day of the Lord” as a time when God will appear in fearsome majesty to right all the wrongs of the world, to punish the evil doers, to vindicate the righteous, and to set up shop in a glorious earthly temple.

That sense of the “Great Day of the Lord” would have been as strongly rooted in the memory banks of Malachi’s readers as the image of John the Baptizer dressed like a biker, doing church on the banks of the Jordan, is in ours.

What holds those two images together is the idea of the “refiner’s fire.”

We have a lot of refineries down here in Houston.  There is a highway just east of town that is lined with refineries.  Every time I drive down that highway I feel sorry for those who work there and those who live there.  Plainly said, it is stinky.  The air is heavy with fumes.  The refineries themselves look like beehives of steel tubing, erector sets of chemical doom.

So I drive by, eager to get past it all, and then it usually occurs to me that I wouldn’t be driving by were it not for the work of those refineries.  The gasoline in my engine came from the processes I’m looking at on the side of the road.

In other words, refining isn’t an end in itself but a means to an end.

Imagine “refining” as “re-fine-ing”.  What does that say?

When gold is refined, it is usually heated up to a liquid.  What isn’t gold is burned off or separates from the gold.  Adding soda ash and borax speeds up the process.  “Fine” gold is separated from what is not gold. 

So it is that God comes to us.  God sees something fine in us that we have long lost sight of, something fine that has been buried, or contaminated, or broken.  The heat that God applies to our lives is love.  Relentless, accepting, justifying, saving love.  Love that will not let us go.

Such refining can certainly be a stinky process.  Witness an alcoholic in the earliest stages of recovery, for the first time coming to terms with the reality of their lives, returning again and again to rooms where they are welcomed with open arms and given the promise that life will get better as they work with others and take certain steps.

Witness a person of faith, returning again and again to the promises of their baptism, courageously facing areas of their lives where they have kept God out, surrendering again and again to God’s will when their own has run them into a brick wall.

Re-fine-ing.  Re-find-ing.  Rediscovery.  Redemption.  Resurrection. 

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, refine us.  Burn away our hypocrisy, our selfishness, our fears, all that separates us from you and from one another.  Refine us, restore us, that we might be about the work of living life to the fullest and being a blessing in the lives of others.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Trust in the LORD forever, for in the LORD GOD you have an everlasting rock. For he has brought low the inhabitants of the height; the lofty city he lays low. He lays it low to the ground, casts it to the dust. The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.

The way of the righteous is level; O Just One, you make smooth the path of the righteous. In the path of your judgments, O LORD, we wait for you; your name and your renown are the soul’s desire. My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. Isaiah 26:4-9

I went to the newspaper this morning and the first article I saw reported on a fiery crash on the major freeway into town.  Early this morning a big truck evidently crashed into a pillar and exploded.  All the lanes were shut down in both directions while the crash was investigated and road cleaned up.  Both people in the truck were taken to the hospital, no reports on their injuries.

Life is so like that.

One moment you are relieved to be driving in the early morning hours through what otherwise would be a highly congested road and the next your world is turning upside down.

Sometimes we know we are clearly at fault.  We took a dangerous risk.  We missed an obvious turn.  We got distracted by something on the side of the road.

Other times we are just going about our business, minding our own affairs, when we are innocently caught up in someone else’s carelessness.

Isaiah says that “you make smooth the path of the righteous” and that has always been more than our hope and our prayer, it has been our expectation.  We expect that God will make a smooth path for our lives.  We expect that God will make things easier for us, that God will lay low the mountains which challenge us, smooth the rocks which trip us, paint a nice yellow brick road which we can easily follow.

That is and always be our hope but not always our experience.  Knowing that, Isaiah encourages us to wait for the Lord, to yearn for guidance in the darkness of the night, to trust what we cannot see.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, our path through life can take dangerous turns.  Accidents happen and lives are disrupted.  Come to us in our moments of loss and confusion.  And bless those today in positions to be helpful to us when we stumble and fall.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true, for the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”

“See, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”

I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me;

but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your comrades the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!” Revelation 22:1-9

I grew up beside a river.  Three rivers actually.  Down beneath the main street bridge, the Bois De Sioux and the Otter Tail rivers converge to form the Red River of the North.  We swam in those rivers, caught fish, floated in the summer, skated in the winter, and every spring worried about how high the flood would be this time.

The Red River defined the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota.  It created one of the best agricultural valleys in the world.  The truth is, without those rivers, there wouldn’t be a town.

First ports, then rivers, then railroads, then highways – human community needs the flow of transportation to flourish like an individual body needs steady flow of blood, the rhythmic beating of a heart, the inhalation of oxygen and the exhalation of carbon dioxide. 

Flow.  Balance.  Integration.  Connectedness.

It’s no surprise that John’s vision of heaven would be seen from the banks of a river.  Bright as crystal, lined with trees.  It is so human to define great communities by their temples of religion, industry, finance, and government.  It is so divine that life begins and ends in the flowing waters between the banks of rivers.

I read once that there is a finite amount of water in our earthly ecosystem.  The same water, used over and over again, cycled and recycled since the beginning of time.  We drink water that Jesus drank.  It is a wonderful vision to me to think that the great Red River of my childhood flows not to Canada but to heaven.

(Click on the lyrics to enjoy the song)

Shall we gather at the river,

where bright angel feet have trod,

with its crystal tide forever

flowing by the throne of God?

Yes, we’ll gather at the river,

the beautiful, the beautiful river;

gather with the saints at the river

that flows by the throne of God.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, thank you for this beautiful vision that brings light to our lives, that reminds us that you have prepared a future for those of us so worried about the future.  Thank you for the rivers that carry our lives.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”

“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”  Luke 21:5-19

We live in the United States where our lives are so dominated by the media that we become like fish who no longer notice the water.  Fueled by the quest for market share and advertising dollars, television, radio and print media outlets tell us each day what we need to care about, what we need to worry about, and what we need to be afraid of. 

We jump from story to story to story…and then we move on.

Meanwhile, the after-effects of the tsunami in Japan and the earthquake in Haiti remain daily challenges long after the media moved on to the next “big” story. When natural disasters fade, we can always go back to character assassination of political candidates or the disastrous character of Hollywood idols.  Why else would Charlie Sheen have gotten a second of media coverage let alone showing up in a Thursday morning devotion? Sex, murder and mayhem always sells.

Edwin Friedmann suggested that we have become a nation of information addicts.  We thrive on being constantly manipulated by the emotional onslaught of voices telling us how “they” are at war with “us”, how stupid or greedy or evil “they” are and how much better “we” would be without “them.”

So it is that we hear Jesus talking about wars, insurrections, earthquakes, plagues, and famines and we find ourselves thinking, “So what is so new about any of that?  They are always present, in every age, somewhere in the world.”  Yes they are.

The question is:  How does God invite us to live in the face of all of this? This is never an easy question but perhaps always the key question.

Jesus tells us, “So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”  Implicit in that is a reminder to trust God, rather than self, in the face of anything.  It might even be helpful if people are open to rational conversation and the free exchange of ideas.

I read an article this morning in the New York Times about an event that happened this past October 9^th.  Hundreds of Egyptian Christians and some Muslims gathered outside the building that houses the state-run Egyptian media to protest the failure to investigate the burning of a Christian church.  By the end of the day, soldiers guarding the building had killed 28 people and left 325 wounded. 

Is this the answer?  Perhaps those protesters came to the realization that God was calling them to march that day, to stand up to the authorities and challenge them to do their jobs, rather than quietly justifying their failure to act by remaining silent.  Perhaps the soldiers firing their guns felt called to do so in defense of God and country.  All we know for sure is that further conversation on the matter is no longer an option for 28 people.

The world is a broken place.  The whole creation, says the Apostle Paul, is groaning in travail, waiting for redemption, waiting for release, waiting for salvation.

Advent waiting.

Let us pray:  Dear Jesus, we live in the dangerous, chaotic times that you warned about because all people live in such times.  What we need from you is guidance and direction.  Help us know the next right thing in our lives and give us the courage to do it. We want to be part of the solution.  So we pray this morning for all those who work for peace, for breaking down dividing walls, for freedom and for enough for all.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.