For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Roses have thorns - something beautiful on top of something painful. God’s word is like this. It is both painful and beautiful. When we really study God’s word, it pierces our soul. It is difficult to truly look at your life laid bare. The beauty comes because we have opened our hearts to God’s word. We see our sin but we also see the great sacrifice of Jesus. Only when we see our sin do we see the need for Christ. Open your heart to the piercing of God’s word and then look to Jesus and see yourself through his eyes of forgiveness, grace, and love.
Prayer Great High Priest Use your word that is living and active and that pierces our souls and lays bare our hearts before you. Thank you for your gift of grace. Amen
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Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. I live among rolling hills and mountains, so seeing prairie grasslands on our trip out west was new to me. At first I thought I wouldn’t like the prairie, that it would be boring without green fields, trees, and mountains. But I was wrong, for I found beauty in the soft muted colors of the prairie. There was a gentleness there that I had to learn to see. As I have seen watching my young grandsons with their newborn sisters, gentleness is something that has to be learned. And it is only possible to learn gentleness when we know that we are dearly loved. Paul told the followers at Colossi that we need to clothe ourselves with gentleness. When we consciously put on love like we put on clothing then we can be learn to be gentle, forgive each other, and seek to love as Christ as loved us.
Prayer Gentle and Loving Father Remind us of how much we are loved. Teach us to forgive as we have been forgiven. Bind us together with your love. Amen You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Early in the morning on a calm day, before the boats move onto the lake, the water is so still it becomes a mirror. Paul wrote to the members of the Corinthian church that they were to be like the reflections on the lake that morning. They reflected the Gospel that Paul had delivered to them. Now they, like we, have the love of Christ written on our hearts, open for the world to read. We need to remind ourselves each day that we are to be reflections of his love. We can only do this when the waters of our lives are calm because we are depending on his strength and grace.
Prayer Christ Jesus, Calm our worried souls. Make our lives a reflection of the love and grace that you have written on our hearts. Amen But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” One of the things that a photographer must do is to see the way the camera sees. No camera can capture exactly what the human eye sees. Sometimes the camera is limited. For example, cameras can’t capture the range of light that the human can see. Sometimes the camera can see things in ways a human can’t, like waterfalls that look smooth and silky. Pictures like these were achieved by slowing down the amount of time the shutter stays open.
Like the difference between how the camera sees and the way a human sees, God sees differently than humans. And like the photographer who must learn to see what the camera will see in order to make beautiful images, we need to learn to see ourselves and others more like God sees. As the photographer must study the capabilities of the camera, we need to study the word of God. Only then will we see ourselves they way God sees us. Prayer Loving Father, Teach us your ways. Open our eyes so that we can see the way we look in your eyes. Help us to see others the way you see them. Amen Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast,” or that he should give something to the poor. So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night. Now they knew what Judas had done when he left the upper room that night they had eaten the Passover together. They had seen him greet Jesus with a kiss that dark night in Gethsemane. And they had run away in fear as the guards took Jesus away. This night and Sabbath day must have been the darkest time of their lives. Their Lord, the one they thought was going to be the conquering Messiah, had died on a Roman cross.
Prayer Crucified Savior, It is hard to look at your suffering and the weight of our sin that you carried on the cross. On this day of darkness help us not to turn away, for we can only understand your sacrifice if we look at you on the cross. We humbly bow, amazed at love we don’t deserve. Amen So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” When Jesus spoke these words he had just been met by a crowd shouting praise as he entered Jerusalem, but his soul was troubled. The crowd just didn’t understand the kind of Messiah he was, even after a voice called from heaven. Their vision was limited to a Messiah that would free them from the darkness of Roman occupation, but Jesus was coming to provide freedom from a much greater darkness, the darkness of sin.
As we sit in the darkness of our sin, we must let the light of Jesus shine into our darkness as the light from this window spills onto this pew in the Smokemont Baptist Church. We no longer have to sit in darkness. Ask Jesus to shine through the open window of your heart and into the darkest part of your life. This won’t be easy for there are some things we want to keep hidden. But only after we expose our hearts to the light can we begin to let the light of God’s love forgive our sin and break into our life. Prayer Dear Jesus, Messiah of Light, Shine your light into our hearts. Teach us to trust your loving light and follow you out of our darkness to walk as children of light. Amen For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. This is one of my favorite images. It is clear and sharp with no camera shake and the light is perfect. But actually the fact that I got this image is more due to luck than skill. I didn’t have my tripod with me that day; we were just doing a little hike from our campsite when we found this butterfly garden. It was the right time of year for the butterflies to be passing through for there were many there that day. It was the middle of the day and there was no wind. I shouldn’t have been able to get this picture and I have tried to take many pictures of butterflies since and none have been as beautiful as this one.
Unlike this accidentally beautiful image of the butterfly, God doesn’t create by accident. His workmanship is always purposeful. When we accept the grace of Christ, he will make us, create us, into new creatures. And because we are his workmanship, his creation, we can bring beauty to the world when we walk in him and do the good works for us to do along the way. Prayer O Great Creator God, May we accept your grace and be examples of your workmanship. As we walk with you show us the good works you have for us to do this day. Scripture:
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:4-5 About This Image: The Ogle cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was built with the materials the settlers had at hand. They used logs from trees cut from the forest and stones for the foundation like the ones from this hillside above the cabin. The choice of stones for the foundation was the first step in building a cabin. The search for a foundation is also the first step in building our lives today. As we come to Jesus Christ and choose him to be the cornerstone of our lives we will become living stones and will be built into houses that can be used by God, made beautiful and precious by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. |
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Soli Deo Gloria,
1 Corinthians 10:31
© 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 Karen Milligan
1 Corinthians 10:31
© 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 Karen Milligan