Daily Devotional August 25 2021
Psalm 119:1-24; 1 Kings 3:1-15; Acts 27:9-26; Mark 14:1-11 A snarky and slightly inebriated friend once snarled at me over drinks and chicken wings that my whole faith was misplaced because ‘think of all the hungry peasants who could have been fed instead of building Notre Dame.’ I pointed out that the building of […]
Daily Devotional August 24 2021
Psalm 91; Deuteronomy 18:15-18; 1 Corinthians 4:9-15; Luke 22:24-30 When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly. That, friends, is what an apostolic faith looks like in action. Positive, persevering, gentle. Anything else, no matter how much it may dress itself up in Christian clothes, is no more […]
Daily Devotional August 23 2021
Psalm 1, 2, 3; 1 Kings 1:5-31; Acts 26:1-23; Mark 13:14-27 If you’ve been following the David drama, you’ll notice a pattern: David spoils his children rotten. And boy howdy, some of them are really rotten. Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah: they’re all shockingly handsome and they’re all awful human beings. Because, I think, David makes a […]
Daily Devotional August 22 2021
Psalm 84; 1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43; Ephesians 6:10-20 ; John 6:56-69 ‘Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young.’ I’m sure there’s some symbolic thing going on in this psalm–sparrows and swallows no doubt meant something to the ancient Hebrews, like if we were […]
Daily Devotional August 21 2021
Psalm 137, 144; 2 Samuel 23:1-7,13-17; Acts 25:13-27; Mark 13:1-13 Don’t spend a lot of time preparing your defense in advance. We can waste a lot of time getting ready for things that don’t come to pass. It’s worth it if those plans that didn’t get used were to help others flourish, to keep them […]
Daily Devotional August 19 2021
Psalm 131, 132, 133; 2 Samuel 19:1-23; Acts 24:1-23; Mark 12:28-34 ‘O Lord, I am not proud; I have no haughty looks. I do not occupy myself with great matters, or with things that are too hard for me.’ Psalm 131:1-2 What great advice for a culture which has grown Roman-stiff in personal pride, so […]
Daily Devotional August 18 2021
Psalm 119:145-167; II Samuel 18:19-33; Acts 23:23-35; Mark 12:13-27 Tests, tests, tests. They keep throwing hypotheticals at Him…”now, what if THIS were the case?…yes, but have You thought about…” There are two good reasons to test people. One is to make sure they are who they say they are–when someone says she’s an expert in […]
Daily Devotional August 17 2021
Psalm 120, 121, 122, 123; 2 Samuel 18:9-18; Acts 23:12-24; Mark 11:27-12:12 ‘Let me sing a love song for my beloved concerning his vineyard.’ So begins the fifth chapter of Isaiah. So much hard work, so much sweat, has the beloved (in this song, God) put into the vineyard (in this song, Israel, but for […]
Daily Devotional August 16 2021
Psalm 34; Isaiah 61:10-11; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 1:46-55 ST MARY the VIRGIN (transferred from Sunday Aug 15) One of my earliest, maybe the earliest, memory of ‘public life’ (as opposed to the domestic whirl of play and family and pets and school and church) was the fall of Saigon. My mom would drop me off […]
Daily Devotional August 14 2021
Psalm 107:33-43, 108; 2 Samuel 16:1-23; Acts 22:17-29; Mark 11:1-11 Ever notice how oddly Jesus behaves after the Palm Sunday procession winds up in the streets of Jerusalem? Here are all these people stripping off their cloaks and cutting branches from the trees and shouting His praises, proclaiming Him (against His will and intent, remember) […]
