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.

Do You Test Us?--March 16, 2015

[From April 4, 2011 archive]

Do you test us, dear God?  Do you test us with
questions, with hardships, or even great evil?
Or do we bring the evil upon ourselves?

Perhaps we are put to shame because our
hearts have not been obedient to your statutes?

Make us aware of the sin we have committed against you.
Then cleanse us and grant that we may belong to you.

When evil comes, we know that you can help us
bear it, even overcome it, if we belong to you.

Then it will not matter whether the evil came as punishment for
our sin, as trouble we have made for ourselves, or as something
you permitted to happen for reasons we will never understand.

What matters is to belong to you.
That is everything.

Lectionary Readings
Ps. 119:73-80; 145; 121; 6
Jer. 16:1-21
Rom. 7:1-12
John 6:1-15

Selected Verses
Ps. 119:80
May my heart be blameless in your statutes,
            so that I may not be put to shame.

Jer. 16:10
And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, “Why has the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us?  What is our iniquity?  What is the sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?” …

Rom. 7:4
In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

John 6:5-6
When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”  He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do.
Posted by Elmer E. Ewing

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