I am an emeritus professor from Cornell University and was a Commissioned Lay Preacher in the Presbyterian Church (USA). For many years I have followed the Daily Lectionary as printed in the Mission Yearbook of my church. For each day of a two-year cycle, the lectionary lists four psalms and three other scriptural passages--usually one from the Old Testament and two from the New Testament. My practice is to copy down a verse or two from one of the psalms and from each of the other three passages. After I have written out all four selections, I reflect upon them, rearrange their order, and incorporate them into a meditation. Sometimes I retain much of the original wording; sometimes all that remains of a selection is an idea that was stimulated when I read the original words. All selections are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. For the Daily Lectionary, see the link below.

Who Could Stand? --August 05, 2010


I. Readings
Psalms 116, 147:12-20, 26, 130
Judges 8:22-35
Acts 4:1-12
John 1:43-51

II. Selections
Psalm 130:3
If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
      Lord, who could stand?

Judges 8:27
Gideon made an ephod of [the gold] and put it in his town, in Ophrah; and all Israel prostituted themselves to it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.

Acts 4:1-2
While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them, much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead.

John 1:46a
Nathanael said to [Philip], “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

III. Meditation: Who Could Stand?

If you should mark iniquities,
who could stand, O Lord?
Not I, not even for a day.

I find myself ensnared like Gideon,
annoyed like the critics of Jesus,
and as cynical as Nathanael.

Release me from the snares;
convert hostility to hope
and cynicism to faith.

Posted by Elmer E. Ewing

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