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.

Less Like Kings, More Like Jesus--April 16, 2021

 

You are our King, O God.  How can that be?

Kings and other earthly rulers do evil things,

yet you deliver us from evil,

judging people with equity.

 

We know, it is not only kings who do evil;

even if we’re called to be your children—

we do evil, and we don’t

like to be rebuked for it.

 

You have not revealed what we will be, God,

but make us less like rulers, more like Jesus.

We want to be like him, 

and to see him as he is.

 

Lectionary Readings

Ps. 96; 148; 49; 138

Dan. 3:1-18

1 John 3:1-10

Luke 3:15-22

 

Selected Verses 

Ps. 96:10

Say among the nations, “The LORD is king!
          The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.
          He will judge the peoples with equity.”

 

Dan. 3:16-17

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defense to you in this matter.  If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us.  …”

 

1 John 3:2

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 

 

Luke 3:19-20

But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.

 

Posted by Elmer E. Ewing

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