Power or Steadfast Love? --August 02, 2010

I. Readings
Psalms 62, 145, 73, 9
Judges 6:25-40
Acts 2:37-47
John 1:1-18

II. Selections
Psalm 62:11-12a
Once God has spoken;
      twice have I heard this:
that power belongs to God,
      and steadfast love belongs to you, O LORD.

Judges 6:31, 36-37
But Joash said to all who were arrayed against him, “Will you contend for Baal? Or will you defend his cause? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been pulled down.” … Then Gideon said to God, “In order to see whether you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said, I am going to lay a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said.”

Acts 2:37
Now when [the crowd] heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”

John 1:16
From [Christ’s] fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

III. Meditation

Gideon questioned your power, as his
father had questioned the power of Baal.

Forgive us—we are more intent on testing
power than in experiencing steadfast love.

Yet from your fullness, revealed in Christ,
we have all received, grace upon grace.

O God, when we are cut to the heart—
when we wonder what we should do—

may your grace lead us to realize that your
steadfast love is fundamental to your power.