This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with a headline from world news:
Massacre in US movie theater
son comforts mother
PSALM 43
O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.
4 Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy;
and I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
This is the psalm of a person cast -down by opposition and unpopularity. The prayer forGod to “send light and truth” comes from a memory of the creation story when God says, “Let there be light.” The petitioner prays the creator God to continue creating, in this case, to create in her the desire to go to the temple where she will rediscover her trust in God, and offer praise, all of which will banish depression and create hope. The beautiful brevity of this prayer and its passion make it useful in all testing circumstances.
still trust in God
Matthew:31-35
31 Then Jesus said to them, ‘You will all become deserters because of me this night; for it is written,
“I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.”
32But after I am raised up, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.’33Peter said to him, ‘Though all become deserters because of you, I will never desert you.’34Jesus said to him, ‘Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.’35Peter said to him, ‘Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.’ And so said all the disciples.
before the cock crows….
Yes, yes, how many times I’ve done what these disciples were doing here. “I will not deny you!” I tell Jesus and as speedily as Peter, I do. That’s because Jesus is not easy. If he were easy I wouldn’t deny him so often. But with his insistence on forgiveness, loving enemies, giving away wealth, declaring God’s truth in the midst of lies, well, he’s hard to stand up for. But every time I let him down and let him carry his cross alone, he tells me that he’ll come back to me in my Galilee, in my ordinary place of living. And when he does, he asks me, as he asked Peter, if I really love him. “Lord,” I say, “You know everything; you know I love you.” At which he tells me, “Get on with it then; feed my sheep.”
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