This is the one little bright spot in a book filled with sorrow and regret. The book is called Lamentations, after all. It’s kind of in the middle of the book which feels right, like the eye of the storm.
Why is a book filled with verse after verse of misery and woe included in the Bible? Well, everyone can related to it so why shouldn’t it be included? Unfortunately, life is painful and disappointing much of the time. It’s a fallen world. The Bible is our story so it includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.
But the Bible is also God’s story and today’s verse reminds the mourner of His unchanging character. He is always faithful. His love is always available. His mercy never runs dry.
Even in the midst of my darkest moment, my deepest grief, my most profound loss… God’s love is right here, the same as ever. Just as shiny and wonderful. His forgiveness is within reach. It’s not even a stretch. When I lift my eyes from my darkness, I can see the hope of God’s bright dawn and a new morning fresh with possibilities.
Dear God,
Thank you so much for your constant presence and dependable love and mercy. Thank you for this promise of hope in the midst of my pain. Remind me to look up from myself and my situation. To look at your smiling face and accept your comfort. Teach me to be a comfort to others in the darkness as well.
In today’s verse, Paul is contending with some people in the Corinthian church who are somehow offended by his claim of authority. It seems odd since Paul started the church and is the only one there with first-hand experience of Jesus. But there are always people who struggle with pride. They are threatened by anyone who displays even the slightest advantage over them. Stronger, more knowledgeable, wealthier, more popular… Anyone who appears higher than them in any way is somehow an affront and an enemy. Their reaction is to attack and try to cut their perceived opponent down — to weaken them, make them seem stupid, ruin their finances or their reputation. The target reveals their particular insecurities.
In today’s verse, the attackers’ insecurities were apparently in their knowledge of God. So they attacked Paul by claiming he didn’t know what he was talking about and had no authority. They got very personal.
How did Paul respond? He didn’t retaliate personally or build himself up. He pointed back to Jesus. Paul didn’t claim power himself, but he reminded the church where true power comes from — God. God has all the power. Accessing this vast power doesn’t happen with arguments and pride, it happens with humility and obedience.
Arguments and pride are demolished by the knowledge of God. If I know God, I am humble. There is no other way to be when faced with the Creator of the universe and everything in it; the One who exists outside of time and space and yet stands here with me offering love; the Author who knows everything about my story and still wants to spend time with me. There is no other way to be but humble. Pride can’t stand in the face of such a Being. If I am proud, I do not know God.
Dear God,
Thank you for showing me who you are through your word, through your creation, andduring times when I pray and contemplate all that you are. Thank you for your beauty, your love, your wisdom, your power, your holiness, and your forgiveness. I worship you in humble obedience today.
I often find myself finishing my husband’s sentences. TV sitcoms would have me believe this is a good thing, a sign of how close we are. But sadly, this isn’t true. Instead it’s a sign of my impatience, and it frustrates my husband. Instead of listening to what he’s saying, I let him get about halfway, finish his thought in my head, and move right into my response. Sometimes I predict correctly what his point will be. Sometimes I don’t. In those cases, he says, “Let me finish…” which always perplexes and frustrates me because in my mind, he had finished and made his point.
Many of our arguments could be avoided if I would obey today’s verse and spend more time listening fully before formulating my response or reacting to what I assumed he meant. Quick to listen. Slow to speak. Slow to anger.
It kind of surprises me that this is a challenge for me because I’m an introvert. I’m not a big talker. I am quiet and would rather not be the one talking in a group, in general. So why do I have a hard time listening? Part of it is just plain old impatience. But another part is that I’m the kind of person who wants to fix things. I think listening equals fixing. But it doesn’t. In fact, rarely is anyone asking me for advice. Just because someone is describing a problem to me doesn’t mean they want me to fix it or offer suggestions.
It’s taken me many years and many bumpy relationships to realize this. But all I had to do was read this verse.
Dear God,
Thank you for this wise verse and wonderful relationship-mending advice. Help me to remember it and put it into practice today and in every conversation. Teach me to listen well, to take time to understand what people are saying, whether I agree with them or not, before responding with my own thoughts. And please give me wisdom so when I do start speaking, it builds others up and is helpful or comforting or meets their needs in some way I may not even understand. Thank you for listening to me.
It’s a shame when Christians get worked up about all sorts of rules and prohibitions and “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots”. Jesus had a lot to say about people who wrapped God in extra laws and rules. He called them blind guides, fools, serpents, and hypocrites. These were the the theological scholars and church leaders of His time!
Jesus had a problem with these extra laws because they were clouding the real priorities of God and acting as a huge barrier for people who didn’t yet know God. One of the main things Jesus taught when He came to earth is in today’s verse. God has really simple priorities. And they are all and only about love. In the very next verse, Jesus says all the law and the prophets are summed up with these two commandments. In other words, I don’t need to worry about remembering 613 commandments. I don’t even have to worry about ten commandments. Just two: love God with all I’ve got and love other people as if they were me.
Jesus didn’t say I could pretend the law, those 613 commandments, never existed. He said He didn’t come to abolish the law, in fact. He came to fulfill it. What does that mean?
God gave the law to show us how high His standards are and to teach us how crappy we are at meeting those standards. We are so crappy at it that we can’t even understand His standards let alone obey them. Fortunately Jesus came to interpret God’s law for us and to meet those standards for us so we don’t have to. He clarified God’s priorities, showed us how to live them out, and then died in our place because He knew we’d still fail.
Just because I’m crappy at something important doesn’t mean I should stop trying. If I did, I never would have learned to walk. I would have toppled over a few times, then thrown up my hands and said, “Oh well, I guess I won’t be one of those people who walks.” I’m crappy at loving. Crappy at loving God and crappy at loving other people as much as I love myself. But God knows that, and He still loves me. He gave me a way into His kingdom anyway. Whew! But He still expects me to keep trying. Every time I fail to love well, He expects me to try again. Practice and practice and practice until I take one little shuffling step forward and all heaven rejoices.
Dear God,
Thank you so much for simplifying your commands for me, for clarifying your priorities. Two commands about love is enough to handle. I’m sorry for my many past failures and those I will have in the future. Show me where my steps are going wrong and where my balance is off. Give me the strength and encouragement to keep at it. To keep loving.
Decision-making has always been a struggle for me. I think this is mainly due to my fear of living with the wrong choice, fear of regret. At times it has been so difficult that I preferred having no choice. I may still have to live with regret, but I would be consoled by the fact that at least it wasn’t my fault. Ridiculous, I know.
Let’s face it, bad choices can have dire consequences. Starting with the first bad choice by Adam and Eve in the garden. They chose to disobey God and eat the fruit He told them not to eat. Oops.
So decision-making can cause me a lot of anxiety. Especially big decisions like where to go to college, whether to accept this job or date that person or get married or have children or move to that city… Decision-making is a real peace-killer.
In today’s verse, Paul is helping the people in the church he started in Philippi find peace. There is anxiety and contention and confusion. He gives many wonderful remedies in Philippians 4, and you should read the whole thing if you are struggling with a lack of peace. In today’s verse he focuses on the problem of not knowing what to do and the anxiety that causes. His answer is basically, “Remember me?” The believers in Philippi knew Paul very well. He spent a lot of time with them, teaching them and living life with them. He is asking them to remember what he taught, what he said, what he did. Go back to basics.
So what did Paul teach, say and do? Paul pointed back to Jesus. Paul taught Jesus’s teachings, he repeated Jesus’s words, and he modeled Jesus’s self-sacrificing generous love.
It may not seem like looking to Jesus’s teachings and life would help me make big decisions. But it actually has helped me quite a bit. It has given me peace because I know that as long as I am doing my best to listen to God and love other people, any choice I make can’t mess up God’s plan for me. He’s much too powerful for anything I do to prevent His will. God will work everything out for the good of those who love Him. (see Romans 8:28) Even Adam and Eve’s devastating rebellion in the garden has been accounted for and redeemed. God planned for that and sent Jesus.
My job is just to love God and love people, and all my decisions should reflect that. God will take care of the rest. I have peace knowing God’s plan is good, and it cannot be thwarted no matter what I choose.
Dear God,
Thank you for your good, pleasing, perfect, and unassailable will. I’m so glad that I don’t have to be afraid about the future. Thank you for making my job simple – love you by loving people. Help my choices to always reflect that goaland to trust you with the rest. Thank you for your welcome peace.
I love the heading that this translation of the Bible includes for this chapter. It’s “Joy in the Morning.” I’m a morning person. For me, this doesn’t mean I love getting out of bed or getting up early. Instead it means that I have the most energy and gumption in the morning. By the afternoon, my motivation is waning. By the evening, I’m done with anything meaningful. My husband who is more of a night owl knows better than to ask me to help him with any kind of project after 9pm. It’s like my brain has already gone to bed.
And along with my lack of energy comes a kind of emotional fatigue as well. Things seem harder at night. Problems seem insurmountable. Troubles are overwhelming. When I feel like that, I know it’s best for me to just go to bed.
Because then morning comes and everything seems possible again. I can picture tackling projects one at a time. Life seems doable. There is joy in the morning. This verse is for me.
Of course, the verse isn’t just about morning people or energy boosts. David is talking about God’s love as well as His holiness. God loves me so much that He wants me to be my best, do my best, be holy like Him. Of course I fail, so He disciplines me, because He loves me. Loving parents discipline their children. It’s hard but makes the children learn and grow and be better people. God is the best parent. He loves me enough to discipline me. He makes sure I know when I have failed to live up to His standards. I feel it. I see it in the faces of people I’ve hurt. I read about it in His word.
But He doesn’t like disciplining me any more than a human parent likes punishing their child. So thankfully His displeasure only lasts the shortest amount of time necessary. His disappointed face may be turned away from me for a night, but there is joy in the morning when I have repented, and He shines his beautiful smile on me with forgiveness. And He says, “Ok, enough of yesterday. Let’s move on to today’s fun plan!”
Dear God,
Thank you for your perfect holiness and for your love. I’m so sorry that I am so bad at being holy. But thank you for providing your dependable grace and forgiveness through Jesus. Show me where I have failed, and help me to do better, but please keep your discipline short. Don’t hide your face from me for long. Thank you for the joy and refreshed promise you bring me every morning.
I used to envision missionaries in uncharted jungles being beheaded or boiled by cannibals when I read this verse. That’s the imagination of a child who watched too much TV.
Martyrs are included in today’s verse (that is, if they were killed due to their good works and loving attitudes, like Jesus Himself), but there are more ways to be persecuted besides being killed.
People are persecuted every day for a variety of things in a variety of ways. In school, the persecutors are called bullies. They bully anyone who is different in any kind of way: taller, shorter, fatter, thinner, older, younger, or just because they are there. In fact, this continues well beyond high school. The differences and the methods simply change a bit. And of course, cowardly bullies have really found their home in the anonymity and remoteness of the Internet.
But why would anyone want to persecute a person for doing good and being loving? It comes back to the “being different” aspect that riles up a bully. If everyone is cheating on a test but one person refuses, that person will be persecuted for being righteous. If everyone is speeding down the road but one person is driving the speed limit, that person will be persecuted with honks and fingers or worse even though they are obeying the law. (Maybe you roll yours eyes at this, but isn’t the law, the law? Or can we pick and choose which ones to obey and when? What is righteous?) If someone wearing a MAGA hat enters an event and people jeer and call them names but you make sure they are safe regardless of your political views, you will be persecuted and jeered as well even though you are being righteous in that moment. If someone wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt enters an event and people jeer and call them names but you make sure they are safe regardless of your political views, you will be persecuted and jeered at as well even though you are being righteous in that moment. If someone wearing a Pride pin enters… you get the idea.
People doing righteous things get persecuted all the time because righteousness is not valued in this world. Real righteousness is against the grain. Society is filled with mobs that want everyone to go with the flow, to fit in, to normalize their standards. Sadly, Christians are just as guilty of this.
To be righteous, and to inherit the kingdom of heaven, I have to constantly analyze my own behavior and motivations. I must hold them up to the standard God set, not the standards the world sets. And His standard is always love. If I do that, and make the right adjustments toward love and generosity and integrity, I can almost be assured of persecution coming at me. But then I can remember today’s verse and think about heaven. There won’t be any bullies there.
Dear God,
Thank you for your perfect standard. I’m so sorry I fail to meet it. But I am so grateful that Jesus met it for me and gave me the freedom to live as if I have met your standard. Give me the strength and courage to live righteously, according to your standard. Show me behavior and attitudes that I need to change today. I never want to be the bully. And help me never to succumb to bullies either but to stand strong, with love and grace, for your perfection.
I mention this “minor” point even though the verse is clearly about peacemaking and not about gender roles because it’s actually not a minor point. I believe the Bible and all of God’s promises are for me. Even though I am a woman. Even though a minister in my past tried to tell me they weren’t, that I was excluded because I am female.
After reading the Bible several times, I concluded he was wrong. God’s love and all of His promises are for me. They are for everyone. That’s the whole point of the Bible, in fact. God’s love is for everyone! He created everyone and loves everyone and wants everyone to be part of His beautiful kingdom.
And this is how peace happens.
War happens when artificial divisions that God did not intend are formed. When one side claims they are somehow better than the other side. Pride and shame give birth to mistrust and suspicion which give birth to fear and anger which give birth to hatred and war.
Peacemakers break down the barriers between perceived categories. The Bible and God’s love is for me and you, no matter who you are. Man, woman, child, adult, white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, English-speaking, mute, deaf, blind, gay, straight, single, married, rich, poor, in prison, an ex-con, an addict, democrat, republican, fit, fat, citizen, undocumented immigrant, janitor, CEO, unemployed.
There is no category of person that is excluded from God’s love. But there are so many categories of people that other people hate. Yes, even some Christians hate! Which should NOT ever be the case.
In today’s verse, Jesus blesses me if I seek to abolish those categories, in my own mind and attitudes, but also in the minds and attitudes of all the people I interact with and have influence over. He doesn’t bless peace-wishers, He blesses peacemakers. I make peace possible if I seek out and actively welcome the people different from me, people I’m afraid of or don’t understand or disagree with. If I listen to them, build them up, seek their best, meet their needs, and encourage them with God’s word and His love, then I am a peacemaker, and I am a child of God.
Dear God,
Thank you for the huge variety of people you created. Forgive me for thinking I am ever somehow better or more important or worthy than any other person you created. Teach me how to make peace. Show me where I can start today.
I deserve a death sentence, but Jesus died in my place so I’m free. But does the justice system metaphor end there? The real judgment day hasn’t happened yet. So I’m in an in-between time. I guess I’ll call it probation.
It matters what I do with my life during probation. I was shown mercy, so I am expected to show mercy. Because when judgment day comes I’m going to need more mercy.
In Matthew 18 Jesus tells the parable of “The Unforgiving Servant”. It speaks of these two needs for mercy. A servant owes a king a ton of money, but when the servant pleads for mercy, the king forgives the entire debt instead of sending him to debtor’s prison. The servant goes free but is apparently on probation because he is being watched. Sadly, the servant refuses to forgive any of the small debts that are owed to him by various people. He sends them to debtor’s prison. The king is told about this. Now comes the second judgment. Because of the servant’s lack of mercy, the king refuses to continue the mercy he initially extended to him. The servant ends up in prison.
In today’s verse, Jesus is explaining the positive outcome I can have instead of what happened to the Unforgiving Servant. I have been given an enormous gift — forgiveness of a huge, unpayable debt, freedom, and life. I can choose to use this freedom to show mercy or withhold it. I have the choice, and all the power.
In Matthew 25 Jesus also talked about judgment day when people will be divided into “sheep” and “goats.” The sheep are apparently those who lived out God’s mercy. They did things like feed the hungry, visit prisoners, take care of sick people, house strangers…. They were rewarded with mercy and eternal life. The goats didn’t do anything bad necessarily, but they didn’t do any of those merciful things. They thoughtlessly ignored the needy in their world. And they were sentenced to death.
Today’s verse seems pretty innocent. But in light of Jesus’s other teachings on the matter, it seems like a dire warning. I’d much rather be a sheep.
It’s important to note that the Bible makes it clear I can’t earn my way into being a sheep by doing good deeds. I am a sheep because I know God, love Him, and therefore love His people and want to extend mercy. It’s just how a sheep behaves. Goats, on the other hand, are people who simply don’t know God.
Dear God,
I so much want to be a sheep at judgment day! Please show me everyday where my mercy is needed and wanted. Open my eyes to the needs around me. Please forgive me when my heart is hard and teach me how to soften it. And give me the wisdom and courage to extend your Good News to any goats I encounter along the way — the best mercy of all.
I’m fortunate to never have truly been in danger of starvation or dying of thirst. I’ve been hungry plenty — very hungry at times in my life — and thirsty, but it’s never been life threatening. Hunger and thirst are unpleasant experiences all humans share and understand which is probably why Jesus used it here. His audience at His Sermon on the Mount definitely would have understood hunger.
But hunger for righteousness?
Jesus could have said, “Blessed are those who seek righteousness…” or “blessed are those who want righteousness really badly.” But he wanted a deeper longing, a desperate need, like hunger. Without food, I will eventually starve to death. Without righteousness I will die as well. Jesus wants His followers to recognize this need, a need just as vital as food and water.
And it’s a need only Jesus can meet. I am utterly incapable of being righteous on my own. An errant thought, and I’ve lost it. A careless word, a lazy gesture, a lack of concern, casually choosing my comfort over someone else’s… These are all things I do every day without much thought, but they all push any chance I have at being righteous farther and farther away.
But righteousness is plentiful at Jesus’s table. He offers it freely if I step up with an appetite, if I tell Him how very hungry and empty I am. I will be filled.
Dear God,
Thank you so much for the rich bounty of your righteousness. I am in desperate need of it. Please forgive me for my failures today. Thank you for pointing them out, but thank you for not leaving me there, starving. I want to be filled with your righteousness.
CamDevo 